Edward Cody, Washington Post 15 Nov 07
Landslides, Relocation of Residents Among Costly Drawbacks of Yangtze Project
MIAOHE, China -- It was in this little village clinging to cliff sides over the Yangtze River that the environmental costs of China's Three Gorges Dam began to add up, a down payment on what experts predict will be billions of dollars and years of struggle to contain the damage.
The first sign was just a crack in the terraced earth, about four inches wide and 35 feet long, villagers said. But engineers found that the crevasse betrayed the danger of a massive landslide. They judged the risk so great that most of Miaohe's 250 farmers were temporarily evacuated. Fearing the hillside would never be safe again, the government started constructing a replacement village on a nearby plateau, blasted out of rock for increased stability.
"This is going to be good," said Han Qinbi, 60, a grizzled peasant who pointed at the spacious new house he and his family will be moving into next summer.
But what Han saw as good fortune was a bad omen for the Chinese government.
In the 18 months since the Three Gorges Dam was completed, increasingly clear signs of environmental degradation have started to accumulate along the Yangtze, just as activists had warned.
Among the most troubling have been incidents of geological instability in the soaring gorges that now embrace a reservoir stretching behind the dam across a good portion of Hubei province 600 miles southwest of Beijing.
Local officials acknowledge that dozens of major landslides have been recorded, affecting more than 20 miles of riverbank.
The Chinese, who had been talking about taming the Yangtze for a century, finally realized their dream of the Three Gorges in May 2006, when the dam was declared finished in a burst of national chest-thumping. From the beginning, Communist Party officials had acknowledged that the massive engineering project would entail environmental risks and upset the lives of riverside peasants. An estimated 1.2 million were forced to move to make way for backed-up water. But the damage could be controlled, the party and government insisted, and overall, the benefits still would outweigh the dangers.
The $24 billion dam played its assigned role in controlling the river during the annual flood season this summer. Moreover, the 7,575-foot-wide (almost 1.5-mile) structure has dramatically increased China's supply of clean electricity, producing 23.7 billion kilowatt hours in the first half of this year. The reservoir and swollen upstream river waters, reaching about 250 miles to Chongqing, have given the center of the country a trouble-free transportation lane.
But the breaking-in period has also shown how vast the environmental damage is likely to be -- and how expensive to handle. Lei Hengshun, an engineering professor at Chongqing University who has followed the Three Gorges project since its inception, said it has opened a "bottomless pit" of government expenditures that will have to go on for decades.
A group of hydraulic engineers and environmentalists reported in March that the overall number of landslides in the area, including small ones, surpassed 4,700, requiring reinforcement or evacuation of 1,000 localities.
Higher and less stable water levels behind the dam, now at almost 500 feet above sea level and scheduled to rise to 575 feet, already have altered pressure bearing on the base of majestic cliff sides, they explained, causing the perennially unstable ground to give way more often up and down the reservoir.
Along the cliff-side road to Miaohe, on the south bank about 20 miles upstream from the dam, a man with a shovel patiently repaired one such slide on a recent afternoon. Just across the river, on the north bank, a small ferry landing had been buried under another slide, forcing travelers to climb over a mound of earth to board. Concrete reinforcements have been erected nearby to keep both lanes clear on the main east-west road along the north bank.
"The negative effects of the dam are starting to appear, one by one," said Wu Dengming, who runs the Green Volunteer League of Chongqing and has long warned about what the dam would do to the river's fragile ecology.
n addition to the landslides, he noted, industrial pollution, fertilizer runoff and waste from Chongqing and other cities have thickened in the backed-up reservoir waters, just as he and others predicted they would. Downstream, he said, Shanghai has noticed seawater moving inland because of a change in the flow of water carried down the river on its 3,900-mile journey from Tibet to the East China Sea.
Lei, the Chongqing University professor, was among a group of government officials, environmentalists and engineers who warned in September that a "catastrophe" could befall the Yangtze River unless the government faces up to the environmental ills intensified by the dam and takes the costly measures necessary to confront them.
"It cost a lot of money to build the dam, and now it's going to keep on costing a lot of money," Lei said in an interview.
The two-day forum that produced the alarm was remarkable for its open challenge to the government's long attempt to minimize dangers raised by the Three Gorges Dam. "The environmental danger must be confronted," said Lei, a former official who always supported the project and still does. "We said that to the officials very clearly. Since the dam is already finished, you have to face the environmental problems and not try to fool yourself about them."
Equally remarkable were reports in the government-controlled press that clearly described the expressions of concern from Lei and other experts. The New China News Agency, which distributes only authorized news, quoted officials as well as experts warning that the lives of people living along the reservoir would be in danger unless the geological instability is dealt with.
"This is the first time the government has publicly admitted the serious environmental problems caused by the Three Gorges Dam," said Wu, the Chongqing activist. "If they had from the beginning grasped how damaging the dam would be, they would not have constructed it."
The project was decided by a generation of party leaders trained as engineers and eager to demonstrate the country's prowess in taming nature. Then-Premier Li Peng in particular promoted the dam in the early 1990s, dismissing its opponents as part of the democracy movement that had blossomed in the 1980s and was crushed at Tiananmen Square in 1989.
In that political context, officials long sought to play down the environmental dangers inherent in the biggest engineering feat in China since the Great Wall. Party censors made sure the focus was on the economic benefits and national prestige that would grow from such an accomplishment.
The relocation of farmers forced to move from low-lying villages generated widespread corruption as local officials distributed -- or not -- resettlement payments from Beijing. Regional planners in Chongqing have estimated that several million more farmers will probably end up voluntarily moving out of riverside villages into Chongqing's main urban sphere over the next two decades as the area increasingly industrializes.
Back when the dam was being designed, such problems were seen as an unavoidable part of China's modernization, Lei said. But a new generation has taken over in Beijing, he noted, seeking to balance economic progress with other concerns, including its impact on China's 700 million farmers.
President Hu Jintao and his premier, Wen Jiabao, have begun emphasizing the need to take environmental dangers into account when making such big economic and engineering decisions. Tellingly, Hu also has seen to it that his photo is not displayed at the Three Gorges exhibition hall among those of dozens of Chinese leaders who have visited the dam to congratulate its engineers and bask in its glory.
But whether he and his successors will spend the money necessary to deal with damage behind the dam over the years to come is the question that environmental activists such as Wu are asking. So far, Miaohe's little disaster has not been expensive. The village party secretary, Li Facheng, 45, said that each family got $400 as resettlement aid and that the local government is spending about $5,000 on each of the new houses.
But for the future, Du Chenglong, a 30-year-old Miaohe native, noted, "Our village is famous for landslides."
China to surpass US in greenhouse gas emissions by 2017: study
Yahoo News 15 Nov 06
Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by Chinese power plants are expected to surpass US utilities' emissions of the main greenhouse gas by 2017, according to the Center for Global Development.
The US think tank, which works to reduce global poverty, said in a report released Wednesday that China's growing economic might is also boosting the country's CO2 emissions.
"If we look ahead over the next 10 years China will overwhelmingly dominate the United States," David Wheeler, the report's author and a former World Bank economist, told AFP.
The CGD's wide-ranging review of emissions from 50,000 power plants around the world found that US power plants emit the most CO2 followed by China's hungry power sector.
US utilities spew out some 2.8 billion tonnes of CO2 annually while Chinese power plants are emitting 2.7 billion tonnes a year, according to the CGD study.
"The numbers we have right now for China and the US are almost at parity," Wheeler said, adding that the CGD is also monitoring Chinese power plants that are being constructed or due to be built.
"From this, we have a pretty good fix on emissions that we can expect," he said.
The survey ranked individual power plants in different countries according to their CO2 emissions.
"Globally, power generation emits nearly 10 billion tonnes of CO2 per year. The US with over 8,000 power plants out of more than 50,000 worldwide, accounts for about 25 percent of that total," the survey found.
The report claimed that the biggest US CO2 emitter is Southern Co. whose power plants belch out 172 million tonnes of the principal greenhouse gas annually, followed by American Eletric Power Company Inc., Duke Energy Corp., and AES Corp.
China's largest emitter is Huaneng Power International which accounts for 292 million tonnes of CO2 emissions, according to the survey.
The US state with the biggest CO2 emissions from electricity generation is Texas which accounts for 290 million tonnes of emissions, followed by Florida (157 million tons) and Indiana (137 million tons).
Researchers said US emissions were high partly due to high living standards, but also differences in energy policy.
"Europeans, with comparable living standards, emit less than half the power sector CO2 of the average American," said CGD president Nancy Birdsall.
The researchers, who want to speed the shift to less carbon-intensive power generation and minimize global warming, created a data base from their findings.
The online data base called CARMA (Carbon Monitoring for Action) can be accessed at www.carma.org.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by Chinese power plants are expected to surpass US utilities' emissions of the main greenhouse gas by 2017, according to the Center for Global Development.
The US think tank, which works to reduce global poverty, said in a report released Wednesday that China's growing economic might is also boosting the country's CO2 emissions.
"If we look ahead over the next 10 years China will overwhelmingly dominate the United States," David Wheeler, the report's author and a former World Bank economist, told AFP.
The CGD's wide-ranging review of emissions from 50,000 power plants around the world found that US power plants emit the most CO2 followed by China's hungry power sector.
US utilities spew out some 2.8 billion tonnes of CO2 annually while Chinese power plants are emitting 2.7 billion tonnes a year, according to the CGD study.
"The numbers we have right now for China and the US are almost at parity," Wheeler said, adding that the CGD is also monitoring Chinese power plants that are being constructed or due to be built.
"From this, we have a pretty good fix on emissions that we can expect," he said.
The survey ranked individual power plants in different countries according to their CO2 emissions.
"Globally, power generation emits nearly 10 billion tonnes of CO2 per year. The US with over 8,000 power plants out of more than 50,000 worldwide, accounts for about 25 percent of that total," the survey found.
The report claimed that the biggest US CO2 emitter is Southern Co. whose power plants belch out 172 million tonnes of the principal greenhouse gas annually, followed by American Eletric Power Company Inc., Duke Energy Corp., and AES Corp.
China's largest emitter is Huaneng Power International which accounts for 292 million tonnes of CO2 emissions, according to the survey.
The US state with the biggest CO2 emissions from electricity generation is Texas which accounts for 290 million tonnes of emissions, followed by Florida (157 million tons) and Indiana (137 million tons).
Researchers said US emissions were high partly due to high living standards, but also differences in energy policy.
"Europeans, with comparable living standards, emit less than half the power sector CO2 of the average American," said CGD president Nancy Birdsall.
The researchers, who want to speed the shift to less carbon-intensive power generation and minimize global warming, created a data base from their findings.
The online data base called CARMA (Carbon Monitoring for Action) can be accessed at www.carma.org.
Black Sea oil spill: who's to blame?
Russian workers point to oil as the problem
Sergei L. Loiko and Megan K. Stack, Los Angeles Times 15 Nov 07;
"Somebody is making millions of dollars by selling oil and sending those ancient tankers to our shore, ready to sink at any minute. But they are not here to help with this mess, are they? Where are the trucks? Where is the heavy machinery we need?"
"It's the disaster we've been dreading for many years. It's not a spill on a vast scale, like some of the massive oil spills, but the Black Sea is a totally enclosed basin. There's no place for the oil to go, except on shore somewhere."
"Giving Russian businessmen a chance to trade in oil is like giving children matches to play with"
Black Sea oil spill blamed on Russia's lax standards
Fred Weir, Yahoo News 16 Nov 07;
"We're extremely worried about attempts to open the Arctic, which is still a unique and untouched ecosystem," says Mr. Slivyak. "The safety record of Russian oil and gas companies is very low, and there's little indication that they learn from incidents like what happened in Kerch this week. I fear that when they start exploring in the far north, we can expect the same kind of carelessness."
Russian workers point to oil as the problem
Sergei L. Loiko and Megan K. Stack, Los Angeles Times 15 Nov 07;
TUZLA SPIT, RUSSIA -- Crunching through oil-crusted seashells scattered on fouled beaches among dead and dying birds, exhausted volunteers fumed Wednesday about the uneven distribution of Russia's petroleum wealth.
As far as the eye could see, the pale sands of this narrow finger poking into the Black Sea were coated with a heavy film of black and piles of oil-soaked seaweed. A strong smell of diesel hung in the air.
Three days after a mighty storm cracked a decrepit tanker in two and dumped 2,000 tons of oil into the Kerch Strait, a small army of workers toiled to clear the mess.
Dead dolphins began to wash ashore, adding to the thousands of birds and untold numbers of fish known to have been poisoned.
"Somebody is making millions of dollars by selling oil and sending those ancient tankers to our shore, ready to sink at any minute," said Alexander Gayduk, a middle-aged farmworker from nearby Taman. "But they are not here to help with this mess, are they? Where are the trucks? Where is the heavy machinery we need?"
"All of our problems are because of this oil," said vineyard worker Alexander Ostapenko, 43. "But what's in it for us? They are polluting our sea and land."
With oil prices soaring, Russia is earning vast sums through petroleum exports. The country's oil income not only is fueling the increasingly assertive foreign policy of President Vladimir V. Putin's government, but creating a new class of fabulously wealthy businessmen, many with ties to the Kremlin.
The government says oil accounts for about half of Russia's economy; some analysts say the figure is much higher. Up to a third of the exported oil moves through the Black Sea.
Russia and Ukraine agreed Wednesday to form a working group led by the deputy transportation ministers of each country to combat the effects of the oil spill, Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich said in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital. He said that he and Russian Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov, who flew to the region Tuesday to oversee cleanup efforts, also agreed to develop joint plans for dealing with other emergencies.
The oil spill was only the latest in a history of man-made insults to the Black Sea, which once was a famously polluted, low-oxygen "dead zone." The sea's fortunes improved when the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 put an end to central economic planning and closed down giant feedlots and pig farms.
Since then, the Black Sea has come back to life. Fisheries had steadily improved, along with other sea life and water quality, said Laurence Mee, a British oceanographer who coordinates the United Nations' Black Sea Environmental Program.
But with the world ever thirstier for fuel, the Black Sea has also turned into what Mee calls "the great superhighway for oil," bustling with tankers hauling oil pumped in Central Asia, the Caspian Sea and Russia.
"It's the disaster we've been dreading for many years," Mee said. "It's not a spill on a vast scale, like some of the massive oil spills, but the Black Sea is a totally enclosed basin. There's no place for the oil to go, except on shore somewhere."
Mee predicted that the spill would have a lingering effect on wildlife and tourism at Black Sea beaches and nature preserves in Russia and Ukraine.
Here on the Tuzla Spit, some of the birds that were still alive tried to fly away Wednesday, but their wings wouldn't carry them. They tried to shake off the slimy black coat, but couldn't.
So they sat quiet as black silhouettes against the rocks, trying to get warm against the autumn wind and waiting to die. Seagulls circled overhead, waiting to feast on their corpses.
Firefighters, farmworkers and soldiers spread out over the sands. A cluster of soldiers in heavy rubber chemical suits moved slowly among the black-coated boulders, armed with spades and pitchforks. Sweat ran down their faces.
"Comrade lieutenant," pleaded one, "can we take off these costumes?"
"No," the young commander replied from the road. "You don't want to get sick if the rain comes back again."
Asked whether his men were volunteers, the officer laughed. "Yes, they are. They are ordered to volunteer."
Nearby, a fisherman named Alexander Vnukov stood in his motorboat, fuming. Facing the collapse of his livelihood, he had hoped to salvage his nets. But he found them ruined, clogged with oil.
"We caught a lot of fish, but we had to throw it all away. The fish smelled like oil," he said. "Who would want to buy it? Even I wouldn't eat it."
The closest town is Taman, onetime home to ancient Greeks and considered one of Russia's oldest settlements. Today, bleak rows of dusty and dilapidated houses give no hint of the town's rich history. Jobs are scarce, so most residents eke out a livelihood off the thousands of vacationers and fishermen who flock to the isolated shores. Now, they are fearful for their future.
"This catastrophe hit my business right in the eye," griped Yevgeny Tupilkin, a 47-year-old owner of a fishing shop.
On Wednesday, townspeople lamented the loss of tourists and swapped theories about who was to blame for the breakup of the Volganeft-139 tanker, built in Bulgaria in 1978. The vessel, which belonged to the Moscow-based oil shipping company Volgotanker, broke apart in a stretch of water between Russia and Ukraine known for rough seas and high winds.
People accused the Russian government, Ukraine, oil tycoons, or the captains of wrecked ships who failed to heed storm warnings.
Hearing the last criticism, a former cargo vessel assistant captain jumped to their defense.
"What could they do?" said Vladimir Alexeyev, 53. "We ended up with two scrap-metal, flat-bottomed, ancient river tankers caught up in the middle of a real, big-time sea storm. The captains are not the only guilty party here. The system itself is to blame."
Taman town council member Igor Golubenkov agreed.
"Giving Russian businessmen a chance to trade in oil is like giving children matches to play with," Golubenkov said.
The cleanup was inching slowly forward. About 1,000 volunteers were working by Wednesday, and 1,000 students were expected to join the effort today.
A rescue helicopter hovered over the water, scanning the sea for signs of five missing Russian seamen. The bodies of three seamen washed ashore Monday.
When the crews on the beach spotted the helicopter, they brightened, waving their arms at the pilot.
"We will eventually clean up our beaches," said Alexander Metashop, another Taman town council member. "Some birds will die. Some fish will die too. But that is not the end of the line. The Black Sea and the Sea of Azov will manage to mend themselves."
Loiko reported from Tuzla Spit and Stack from Moscow. Times staff writer Kenneth R. Weiss in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
Black Sea oil spill blamed on Russia's lax standards
Fred Weir, Yahoo News 16 Nov 07;
Sunday's Black Sea storm was admittedly one of the worst on record. But nature's ferocity may pale next to human recklessness as an explanation for what Russian Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov described as "the biggest mass sinking of ships" in the country's history.
"You can't blame everything on the weather," noted Mr. Zubkov, as he opened an inquiry into the disaster, in which an aged river tanker spewed at least 560,000 gallons of fuel oil in the narrow Strait of Kerch – nearly 10 times the size of San Francisco's Nov. 7 spill.
As Russia's oil exports ramp up amid spiking global prices that reached almost $100 per barrel last week, officials say ecological protection is improving. But environmentalists and critics of the burgeoningenergy industry say standards are applied selectively and warn that Russia's oil exports travel through ill-maintained pipelines, some of which are four decades old. Much domestic transport, meanwhile, operates far below world standards, they contend.
"It is the goal of the Russian government to export as much oil as possible while the prices are high and, since they are obeying official policy, the oil companies often feel they can ignore safety concerns with impunity," says Vladimir Slivyak, head of Ecodefense, an independent environmental watchdog based in Kaliningrad. "Nobody thinks about safety, everybody thinks about money," he says.
The sunken Russian oil tanker, the Volganeft-139, was a riverboat not equipped for operation on the open sea and should never have been there, experts say. The captain of that and several other ships set off into the narrow and dangerous Strait of Kerch in defiance of weather warnings, for which they may face legal action. Three bodies have washed ashore, five men are missing, and up to 30,000 birds have perished in the wake of the shipwrecks and resultant oil spill.
Better standards, but fairly applied?Oleg Mitvol, deputy chief of Russia's official environmental protection agency, says he can't comment on alleged violations in the mass sinking of ships at Kerch since the matter is under criminal investigation but insists that ecological protection is improving in Russia's oil industry.
"Companies didn't think about environmental safety at all until we started inspecting them stringently," he says. He cites his recent inspection of the private LukOil's operations in the Arctic territory of Komi, site of a 1994 accident in which 33.6 million gallons of oil flooded into the fragile tundra, where he forced the company to pledge about $3 billion for new safety technology. "Russian companies are learning to work to world standards," he says.
But critics argue that privately owned companies are disproportionately targeted for environmental checks. "LukOil spends fives times more on environmental protection than the state-owned Rosneft does," says Alexei Gruzdev, an analyst with Kortes, a Moscow-based energy consultancy. "The system is contradictory and far from ideal."
Foreign-owned oil firms can find themselves subject to crippling environmental reviews. A year ago, as the state-owned natural gas giant Gazprom maneuvered to take over Royal Dutch Shell's control of the Sakhalin-2 Pacific coast oil-and-gas development, Mr. Mitvol arrived with a team of inspectors and declared that Shell had caused up to $50 billion in damage to the delicate local ecosystem. Within weeks, Shell sold its shares in the operation to Gazprom at a steep discount.
"If relations between a company and the authorities are good, inspectors tend not to find any problems," says Mikhail Krutikhin, an analyst with RusEnergy, an independent consultancy. "If relations are bad, all kinds of troubles can crop up."
22,000 pipeline bursts per yearMost of Russia's oil exports move through the vast 50,000-km pipeline network of Transneft, the state-owned pipeline monopoly, which offers little public information about its operations. But according to Regnum, a Russian online business news service, the company suffers an average of about 10 serious leaks a year, including a 14,000-gallon spill last year on the Europe-bound Druzhba-1 pipeline.
Experts say the real nightmare is the million or so kilometers of local trunk pipelines that feed the Transneft system. "Almost all of these are obsolete, and there are spillages on a daily basis," says Alexei Kiselyov, a campaigner with Greenpeace Russia. Figures published in the World Bank's monthly World Finance Review suggest that oil pipeline bursts grew from about 19,000 in 2002 to more than 22,000 in 2005.
"Newly built facilities tend to be OK, but these are a tiny percentage of the total," says Mr. Kisleyov. "The majority are in terrible shape."
Russia is planning a vast expansion of its export network, including a 2,500-mile pipeline across eastern Siberia that would supply oil to China, east Asia, and the US.
But environmentalists say their biggest concern is planned expansion of oil and gas exploration in the untapped Arctic, particularly if Moscow's pending claim for economic control over nearly half a million square miles around the North Pole is approved by the United Nations. Russia estimates the region may contain up to 10 billion tons of petroleum.
"We're extremely worried about attempts to open the Arctic, which is still a unique and untouched ecosystem," says Mr. Slivyak. "The safety record of Russian oil and gas companies is very low, and there's little indication that they learn from incidents like what happened in Kerch this week. I fear that when they start exploring in the far north, we can expect the same kind of carelessness."
Sergei L. Loiko and Megan K. Stack, Los Angeles Times 15 Nov 07;
"Somebody is making millions of dollars by selling oil and sending those ancient tankers to our shore, ready to sink at any minute. But they are not here to help with this mess, are they? Where are the trucks? Where is the heavy machinery we need?"
"It's the disaster we've been dreading for many years. It's not a spill on a vast scale, like some of the massive oil spills, but the Black Sea is a totally enclosed basin. There's no place for the oil to go, except on shore somewhere."
"Giving Russian businessmen a chance to trade in oil is like giving children matches to play with"
Black Sea oil spill blamed on Russia's lax standards
Fred Weir, Yahoo News 16 Nov 07;
"We're extremely worried about attempts to open the Arctic, which is still a unique and untouched ecosystem," says Mr. Slivyak. "The safety record of Russian oil and gas companies is very low, and there's little indication that they learn from incidents like what happened in Kerch this week. I fear that when they start exploring in the far north, we can expect the same kind of carelessness."
Russian workers point to oil as the problem
Sergei L. Loiko and Megan K. Stack, Los Angeles Times 15 Nov 07;
TUZLA SPIT, RUSSIA -- Crunching through oil-crusted seashells scattered on fouled beaches among dead and dying birds, exhausted volunteers fumed Wednesday about the uneven distribution of Russia's petroleum wealth.
As far as the eye could see, the pale sands of this narrow finger poking into the Black Sea were coated with a heavy film of black and piles of oil-soaked seaweed. A strong smell of diesel hung in the air.
Three days after a mighty storm cracked a decrepit tanker in two and dumped 2,000 tons of oil into the Kerch Strait, a small army of workers toiled to clear the mess.
Dead dolphins began to wash ashore, adding to the thousands of birds and untold numbers of fish known to have been poisoned.
"Somebody is making millions of dollars by selling oil and sending those ancient tankers to our shore, ready to sink at any minute," said Alexander Gayduk, a middle-aged farmworker from nearby Taman. "But they are not here to help with this mess, are they? Where are the trucks? Where is the heavy machinery we need?"
"All of our problems are because of this oil," said vineyard worker Alexander Ostapenko, 43. "But what's in it for us? They are polluting our sea and land."
With oil prices soaring, Russia is earning vast sums through petroleum exports. The country's oil income not only is fueling the increasingly assertive foreign policy of President Vladimir V. Putin's government, but creating a new class of fabulously wealthy businessmen, many with ties to the Kremlin.
The government says oil accounts for about half of Russia's economy; some analysts say the figure is much higher. Up to a third of the exported oil moves through the Black Sea.
Russia and Ukraine agreed Wednesday to form a working group led by the deputy transportation ministers of each country to combat the effects of the oil spill, Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich said in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital. He said that he and Russian Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov, who flew to the region Tuesday to oversee cleanup efforts, also agreed to develop joint plans for dealing with other emergencies.
The oil spill was only the latest in a history of man-made insults to the Black Sea, which once was a famously polluted, low-oxygen "dead zone." The sea's fortunes improved when the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 put an end to central economic planning and closed down giant feedlots and pig farms.
Since then, the Black Sea has come back to life. Fisheries had steadily improved, along with other sea life and water quality, said Laurence Mee, a British oceanographer who coordinates the United Nations' Black Sea Environmental Program.
But with the world ever thirstier for fuel, the Black Sea has also turned into what Mee calls "the great superhighway for oil," bustling with tankers hauling oil pumped in Central Asia, the Caspian Sea and Russia.
"It's the disaster we've been dreading for many years," Mee said. "It's not a spill on a vast scale, like some of the massive oil spills, but the Black Sea is a totally enclosed basin. There's no place for the oil to go, except on shore somewhere."
Mee predicted that the spill would have a lingering effect on wildlife and tourism at Black Sea beaches and nature preserves in Russia and Ukraine.
Here on the Tuzla Spit, some of the birds that were still alive tried to fly away Wednesday, but their wings wouldn't carry them. They tried to shake off the slimy black coat, but couldn't.
So they sat quiet as black silhouettes against the rocks, trying to get warm against the autumn wind and waiting to die. Seagulls circled overhead, waiting to feast on their corpses.
Firefighters, farmworkers and soldiers spread out over the sands. A cluster of soldiers in heavy rubber chemical suits moved slowly among the black-coated boulders, armed with spades and pitchforks. Sweat ran down their faces.
"Comrade lieutenant," pleaded one, "can we take off these costumes?"
"No," the young commander replied from the road. "You don't want to get sick if the rain comes back again."
Asked whether his men were volunteers, the officer laughed. "Yes, they are. They are ordered to volunteer."
Nearby, a fisherman named Alexander Vnukov stood in his motorboat, fuming. Facing the collapse of his livelihood, he had hoped to salvage his nets. But he found them ruined, clogged with oil.
"We caught a lot of fish, but we had to throw it all away. The fish smelled like oil," he said. "Who would want to buy it? Even I wouldn't eat it."
The closest town is Taman, onetime home to ancient Greeks and considered one of Russia's oldest settlements. Today, bleak rows of dusty and dilapidated houses give no hint of the town's rich history. Jobs are scarce, so most residents eke out a livelihood off the thousands of vacationers and fishermen who flock to the isolated shores. Now, they are fearful for their future.
"This catastrophe hit my business right in the eye," griped Yevgeny Tupilkin, a 47-year-old owner of a fishing shop.
On Wednesday, townspeople lamented the loss of tourists and swapped theories about who was to blame for the breakup of the Volganeft-139 tanker, built in Bulgaria in 1978. The vessel, which belonged to the Moscow-based oil shipping company Volgotanker, broke apart in a stretch of water between Russia and Ukraine known for rough seas and high winds.
People accused the Russian government, Ukraine, oil tycoons, or the captains of wrecked ships who failed to heed storm warnings.
Hearing the last criticism, a former cargo vessel assistant captain jumped to their defense.
"What could they do?" said Vladimir Alexeyev, 53. "We ended up with two scrap-metal, flat-bottomed, ancient river tankers caught up in the middle of a real, big-time sea storm. The captains are not the only guilty party here. The system itself is to blame."
Taman town council member Igor Golubenkov agreed.
"Giving Russian businessmen a chance to trade in oil is like giving children matches to play with," Golubenkov said.
The cleanup was inching slowly forward. About 1,000 volunteers were working by Wednesday, and 1,000 students were expected to join the effort today.
A rescue helicopter hovered over the water, scanning the sea for signs of five missing Russian seamen. The bodies of three seamen washed ashore Monday.
When the crews on the beach spotted the helicopter, they brightened, waving their arms at the pilot.
"We will eventually clean up our beaches," said Alexander Metashop, another Taman town council member. "Some birds will die. Some fish will die too. But that is not the end of the line. The Black Sea and the Sea of Azov will manage to mend themselves."
Loiko reported from Tuzla Spit and Stack from Moscow. Times staff writer Kenneth R. Weiss in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
Black Sea oil spill blamed on Russia's lax standards
Fred Weir, Yahoo News 16 Nov 07;
Sunday's Black Sea storm was admittedly one of the worst on record. But nature's ferocity may pale next to human recklessness as an explanation for what Russian Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov described as "the biggest mass sinking of ships" in the country's history.
"You can't blame everything on the weather," noted Mr. Zubkov, as he opened an inquiry into the disaster, in which an aged river tanker spewed at least 560,000 gallons of fuel oil in the narrow Strait of Kerch – nearly 10 times the size of San Francisco's Nov. 7 spill.
As Russia's oil exports ramp up amid spiking global prices that reached almost $100 per barrel last week, officials say ecological protection is improving. But environmentalists and critics of the burgeoningenergy industry say standards are applied selectively and warn that Russia's oil exports travel through ill-maintained pipelines, some of which are four decades old. Much domestic transport, meanwhile, operates far below world standards, they contend.
"It is the goal of the Russian government to export as much oil as possible while the prices are high and, since they are obeying official policy, the oil companies often feel they can ignore safety concerns with impunity," says Vladimir Slivyak, head of Ecodefense, an independent environmental watchdog based in Kaliningrad. "Nobody thinks about safety, everybody thinks about money," he says.
The sunken Russian oil tanker, the Volganeft-139, was a riverboat not equipped for operation on the open sea and should never have been there, experts say. The captain of that and several other ships set off into the narrow and dangerous Strait of Kerch in defiance of weather warnings, for which they may face legal action. Three bodies have washed ashore, five men are missing, and up to 30,000 birds have perished in the wake of the shipwrecks and resultant oil spill.
Better standards, but fairly applied?Oleg Mitvol, deputy chief of Russia's official environmental protection agency, says he can't comment on alleged violations in the mass sinking of ships at Kerch since the matter is under criminal investigation but insists that ecological protection is improving in Russia's oil industry.
"Companies didn't think about environmental safety at all until we started inspecting them stringently," he says. He cites his recent inspection of the private LukOil's operations in the Arctic territory of Komi, site of a 1994 accident in which 33.6 million gallons of oil flooded into the fragile tundra, where he forced the company to pledge about $3 billion for new safety technology. "Russian companies are learning to work to world standards," he says.
But critics argue that privately owned companies are disproportionately targeted for environmental checks. "LukOil spends fives times more on environmental protection than the state-owned Rosneft does," says Alexei Gruzdev, an analyst with Kortes, a Moscow-based energy consultancy. "The system is contradictory and far from ideal."
Foreign-owned oil firms can find themselves subject to crippling environmental reviews. A year ago, as the state-owned natural gas giant Gazprom maneuvered to take over Royal Dutch Shell's control of the Sakhalin-2 Pacific coast oil-and-gas development, Mr. Mitvol arrived with a team of inspectors and declared that Shell had caused up to $50 billion in damage to the delicate local ecosystem. Within weeks, Shell sold its shares in the operation to Gazprom at a steep discount.
"If relations between a company and the authorities are good, inspectors tend not to find any problems," says Mikhail Krutikhin, an analyst with RusEnergy, an independent consultancy. "If relations are bad, all kinds of troubles can crop up."
22,000 pipeline bursts per yearMost of Russia's oil exports move through the vast 50,000-km pipeline network of Transneft, the state-owned pipeline monopoly, which offers little public information about its operations. But according to Regnum, a Russian online business news service, the company suffers an average of about 10 serious leaks a year, including a 14,000-gallon spill last year on the Europe-bound Druzhba-1 pipeline.
Experts say the real nightmare is the million or so kilometers of local trunk pipelines that feed the Transneft system. "Almost all of these are obsolete, and there are spillages on a daily basis," says Alexei Kiselyov, a campaigner with Greenpeace Russia. Figures published in the World Bank's monthly World Finance Review suggest that oil pipeline bursts grew from about 19,000 in 2002 to more than 22,000 in 2005.
"Newly built facilities tend to be OK, but these are a tiny percentage of the total," says Mr. Kisleyov. "The majority are in terrible shape."
Russia is planning a vast expansion of its export network, including a 2,500-mile pipeline across eastern Siberia that would supply oil to China, east Asia, and the US.
But environmentalists say their biggest concern is planned expansion of oil and gas exploration in the untapped Arctic, particularly if Moscow's pending claim for economic control over nearly half a million square miles around the North Pole is approved by the United Nations. Russia estimates the region may contain up to 10 billion tons of petroleum.
"We're extremely worried about attempts to open the Arctic, which is still a unique and untouched ecosystem," says Mr. Slivyak. "The safety record of Russian oil and gas companies is very low, and there's little indication that they learn from incidents like what happened in Kerch this week. I fear that when they start exploring in the far north, we can expect the same kind of carelessness."
China the focus in clean cars race
Elaine Kurtenbach, Associated Press, Yahoo News 16 Nov 07;
Automakers racing to find affordable ways to make cars environmentally sustainable are zeroing in on polluted, fuel-scarce China to help them take clean car concepts from the laboratory to the market.
Mounting alarm over global warming and soaring crude oil prices was evident among automakers showcasing their latest green technologies at the Challenge Bibendum, held this week in Shanghai's "Auto City" — an industrial zone to the west of the city.
At the 2004 Shanghai Bibendum, named after the puffy mascot of French tire-making sponsor Michelin, the talk was all of phasing in various technologies over decades.
Today, with crude oil prices encroaching on $100 a barrel, it's of moving ahead with all technologies as soon as possible, especially in China, where environmental crises and fuel shortages resulting from its embrace of the automobile make it a microcosm of global trends.
"We used to talk about timeframes of short-mid-long-term. Now all of them are in play to figure out what are the different options for the different markets," said Elizabeth Lowery, vice president for environment, energy and safety policy at General Motors Corp.
With its huge market and high velocity growth, China is "critical" to the effort to reduce dependence on petroleum and carbon dioxide emissions, Lowery said in an interview.
In both oil consumption and vehicle sales, China ranks second globally after the United States and is fast catching up. Vehicle sales jumped 25 percent last year to 7.2 million units, including trucks and buses.
Spurred by the country's growing dependence on oil imports, the government targeted cleaner cars as a priority in February 2006 as part of a broad range of efforts to reduce carbon emissions and improve energy efficiency.
It has promised grants and tax breaks to support industry efforts, and recently issued rigorous standards for makers of alternative fuel vehicles.
The urgent need for progress was evident outside the Bibendum venue, where a gray haze hung over the sleek concept cars whizzing around the parking lot.
Worldwide, automakers are investing billions of dollars to develop more eco-friendly vehicles to meet stricter standards on auto emissions and fuel efficiency, helped by recent advances in battery and fuel cell technology.
Late last month, GM announced plans for a $250 million alternative-fuel research center in Shanghai.
Both Toyota and Honda produce hybrid vehicles, which are powered by electricity and gasoline, in China and GM has said it plans to start selling a gas-electric hybrid here next year.
The challenge remains making the technologies affordable, and that hinges on boosting production volumes to reduce manufacturing costs per vehicle. Automakers are looking to the double-digit growth in China and other developing markets such as India to help realize those economies of scale.
"What really counts is applying the right technology on volume vehicles," said John Viera, director of sustainable business strategies at Ford Motor Co.
Herbert Kohler, chief environmental officer and vice president at Germany's Daimler AG, echoed that sentiment. "The number one issue is commercialization: To get the cost down."
Viera urged that Beijing promote clean cars, both hybrids and others, with tax breaks and other policy incentives.
"When we have government support, we shall launch these products for Chinese consumers," he said. "We need governments to be our partners."
So far, progress toward commercialization has illustrated the lack of a one-size-fits-all solution. For some countries, such as major biofuel producer Brazil, ethanol is a viable option. Others are increasingly relying on hybrids and other advances in traditional fuels while they experiment with fuel cell technology.
China has sought to curb an expansion in biofuel production to help protect food supplies and control prices. Thus automakers such as Ford, Daimler and Volkswagen AG are focusing on diesel, which can be processed from a variety of resources, including coal and natural gas.
"Our aim is to make diesel as clean as gas engines and gas engines as efficient as diesel," Kohler said.
Meanwhile, tire makers and chemicals manufacturers are developing new materials to reduce vehicle weight, wind resistance and ground friction — factors that can account for about a third of the carbon emissions that cause global warming.
Even road contractors have a crucial role to play in reducing pollution, recycling materials and using paving that can maximize efficiency, noted Jean Beauverd, chairman of the International Road Federation and president of road building company Colas Switzerland.
"There is a general agreement that business as usual is not an option," Beauvert said.
Automakers racing to find affordable ways to make cars environmentally sustainable are zeroing in on polluted, fuel-scarce China to help them take clean car concepts from the laboratory to the market.
Mounting alarm over global warming and soaring crude oil prices was evident among automakers showcasing their latest green technologies at the Challenge Bibendum, held this week in Shanghai's "Auto City" — an industrial zone to the west of the city.
At the 2004 Shanghai Bibendum, named after the puffy mascot of French tire-making sponsor Michelin, the talk was all of phasing in various technologies over decades.
Today, with crude oil prices encroaching on $100 a barrel, it's of moving ahead with all technologies as soon as possible, especially in China, where environmental crises and fuel shortages resulting from its embrace of the automobile make it a microcosm of global trends.
"We used to talk about timeframes of short-mid-long-term. Now all of them are in play to figure out what are the different options for the different markets," said Elizabeth Lowery, vice president for environment, energy and safety policy at General Motors Corp.
With its huge market and high velocity growth, China is "critical" to the effort to reduce dependence on petroleum and carbon dioxide emissions, Lowery said in an interview.
In both oil consumption and vehicle sales, China ranks second globally after the United States and is fast catching up. Vehicle sales jumped 25 percent last year to 7.2 million units, including trucks and buses.
Spurred by the country's growing dependence on oil imports, the government targeted cleaner cars as a priority in February 2006 as part of a broad range of efforts to reduce carbon emissions and improve energy efficiency.
It has promised grants and tax breaks to support industry efforts, and recently issued rigorous standards for makers of alternative fuel vehicles.
The urgent need for progress was evident outside the Bibendum venue, where a gray haze hung over the sleek concept cars whizzing around the parking lot.
Worldwide, automakers are investing billions of dollars to develop more eco-friendly vehicles to meet stricter standards on auto emissions and fuel efficiency, helped by recent advances in battery and fuel cell technology.
Late last month, GM announced plans for a $250 million alternative-fuel research center in Shanghai.
Both Toyota and Honda produce hybrid vehicles, which are powered by electricity and gasoline, in China and GM has said it plans to start selling a gas-electric hybrid here next year.
The challenge remains making the technologies affordable, and that hinges on boosting production volumes to reduce manufacturing costs per vehicle. Automakers are looking to the double-digit growth in China and other developing markets such as India to help realize those economies of scale.
"What really counts is applying the right technology on volume vehicles," said John Viera, director of sustainable business strategies at Ford Motor Co.
Herbert Kohler, chief environmental officer and vice president at Germany's Daimler AG, echoed that sentiment. "The number one issue is commercialization: To get the cost down."
Viera urged that Beijing promote clean cars, both hybrids and others, with tax breaks and other policy incentives.
"When we have government support, we shall launch these products for Chinese consumers," he said. "We need governments to be our partners."
So far, progress toward commercialization has illustrated the lack of a one-size-fits-all solution. For some countries, such as major biofuel producer Brazil, ethanol is a viable option. Others are increasingly relying on hybrids and other advances in traditional fuels while they experiment with fuel cell technology.
China has sought to curb an expansion in biofuel production to help protect food supplies and control prices. Thus automakers such as Ford, Daimler and Volkswagen AG are focusing on diesel, which can be processed from a variety of resources, including coal and natural gas.
"Our aim is to make diesel as clean as gas engines and gas engines as efficient as diesel," Kohler said.
Meanwhile, tire makers and chemicals manufacturers are developing new materials to reduce vehicle weight, wind resistance and ground friction — factors that can account for about a third of the carbon emissions that cause global warming.
Even road contractors have a crucial role to play in reducing pollution, recycling materials and using paving that can maximize efficiency, noted Jean Beauverd, chairman of the International Road Federation and president of road building company Colas Switzerland.
"There is a general agreement that business as usual is not an option," Beauvert said.
US, China working on biofuels pact
Joe McDonald, Associated Press, Yahoo News 16 Nov 07
The United States and China are working on a pact to promote use of ethanol and other biofuels to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and could announce an agreement as early as next month, an American official said Friday.
The agreement would call for cooperation in research, producing crops for fuel and other areas, said Alexander Karsner, an assistant U.S. energy secretary. He was in Beijing for talks with Chinese officials on promoting use of renewable energy sources.
The United States and China are the world's biggest oil consumers and producers of carbon dioxide and other gases that scientists say trap the sun's heat and are raising global temperatures.
Karsner said he and Chinese officials talked about a meeting next month in Indonesia of environment officials from 80 countries to discuss a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol on emissions reductions. He said he did not bring up Washington's insistence that Beijing, a major emissions source, accept binding limits. China has rejected emissions caps but says it will try to curb gas production.
A biofuels agreement could be announced at the Dec. 12 meeting of the Strategic Economic Dialogue, a high-level U.S.-Chinese forum on trade and other issues, Karsner said. He declined to give details, saying they still are being discussed.
It would be Washington's first such pact in Asia, following similar agreements with Brazil and Sweden, Karsner told reporters.
"China is a natural, as would be India, to enhance cooperation on biofuels," he said.
China has promoted wind power and other alternative energy in hopes of reducing environmental damage from heavy use of coal and oil to fuel its booming economy. The communist government also wants to curb reliance on imported energy, which it sees as a strategic weakness.
China already is the third-largest producer of biofuels after the United States and Brazil, which account for 80 percent of global production, according to Karsner.
The United States and China are working on a pact to promote use of ethanol and other biofuels to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and could announce an agreement as early as next month, an American official said Friday.
The agreement would call for cooperation in research, producing crops for fuel and other areas, said Alexander Karsner, an assistant U.S. energy secretary. He was in Beijing for talks with Chinese officials on promoting use of renewable energy sources.
The United States and China are the world's biggest oil consumers and producers of carbon dioxide and other gases that scientists say trap the sun's heat and are raising global temperatures.
Karsner said he and Chinese officials talked about a meeting next month in Indonesia of environment officials from 80 countries to discuss a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol on emissions reductions. He said he did not bring up Washington's insistence that Beijing, a major emissions source, accept binding limits. China has rejected emissions caps but says it will try to curb gas production.
A biofuels agreement could be announced at the Dec. 12 meeting of the Strategic Economic Dialogue, a high-level U.S.-Chinese forum on trade and other issues, Karsner said. He declined to give details, saying they still are being discussed.
It would be Washington's first such pact in Asia, following similar agreements with Brazil and Sweden, Karsner told reporters.
"China is a natural, as would be India, to enhance cooperation on biofuels," he said.
China has promoted wind power and other alternative energy in hopes of reducing environmental damage from heavy use of coal and oil to fuel its booming economy. The communist government also wants to curb reliance on imported energy, which it sees as a strategic weakness.
China already is the third-largest producer of biofuels after the United States and Brazil, which account for 80 percent of global production, according to Karsner.
Climate change report to warn of potentially 'irreversible' impacts
Marlowe Hood, Yahoo News 16 Nov 07;
Less than three weeks before a crucial conference on climate change, UN experts agreed Friday on a draft report that warns global warming may have far-reaching and irreversible consequences.
The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) encapsulates a massive overview of the global-warming problem, with the goal of guiding policymakers for the next five years.
Delegates on the paramount scientific authority agreed the draft summary after night-long negotiations, chief French delegate Marc Gillet told AFP.
Human activities "could lead to abrupt or irreversible climate changes and impacts," the agreed text said.
The report will be officially adopted on Saturday, followed by a press conference attended by United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon, delegates aid.
The so-called synthesis report summarises three massive documents issued this year covering the evidence for climate change; the present and possible future impacts of it; and the options for tackling the peril.
"The synthesis is quite balanced. It is a good summary of what was described in the three reports," said Gillet.
After Saturday, attention shifts to a key meeting in Bali, Indonesia, where governments will be tasked with setting down a "roadmap" for negotiations culminating in a deal to slash carbon emissions and help developing nations cope with climate change.
The IPCC experts agreed that the rise in Earth's temperature observed in the past few decades was principally due to human causes, not natural ones, as "climate skeptics" often aver.
The impacts of climate change are already visible, in the form of retreating glaciers and snow loss in alpine regions, thinning Arctic summer sea ice and thawing permafrost, according to the three IPCC reports issued earlier this year predicted.
But sometimes sharp disagreement emerged during the five days of negotiations in Valencia to hammer out the summary, even though the main findings remained untouched.
US delegates in particular said references to "irreversible" climate change and impacts were imprecise.
They argued, for example, that the melting of glaciers or ice sheets -- which could raise ocean levels by several meters (a dozen feet) -- was not "irreversible" as ice could eventually reform.
"But we are not dealing with geological time scales of tens of thousands of years," said one delegate, irked by this line of reasoning. "We are talking about dire consequences to humans and the environment in the coming decades."
By 2100, global average surface temperatures could rise by between 1.1 C (1.98 F) and 6.4 C (11.52 F) compared to 1980-99 levels, while sea levels will rise by between 18 and 59 centimetres (7.2 and 23.2 inches), according to the IPCC's forecast.
Heatwaves, rainstorms, drought, tropical cyclones and surges in sea level are among the events expected to become more frequent, more widespread and/or more intense this century.
As a result, water shortages, hunger, flooding and damage to homes will be a heightened threat.
"All countries" will be affected, according to the IPCC. Those bearing the brunt, though, will be poor countries which incidentally bear the least responsibility for creating the problem.
The IPCC won this year's Nobel Peace Prize alongside climate campaigner and former US vice president Al Gore.
It has been widely praised for the impartiality and objectivity of its reports, although this year some experts have said its review process may be too conservative and slow-moving to assess what now transpires to be a fast-moving problem.
This year's is the fourth assessment report since the IPCC was established in 1988 by the WMO and UN Environment Programme (UNEP).
The December 3-14 conference in Bali aims at deepening and accelerating cuts in greenhouse-gas pollution after 2012, when current pledges under the UN's Kyoto Protocol expire.
There is now broad agreement on the scope of the problem, but countries remain sharply divided on how to tackle it.
The United States and China, which together account for roughly half of all emissions, baulk at setting legally-binding targets for curbing their pollution, although the reasons for their objections are different.
IPCC to warn of 'abrupt' warming
Richard Black, BBC News 16 Nov 07
Climate change may bring "abrupt and irreversible" impacts, the UN's climate advisory panel is set to announce.
Delegates to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) agreed a summary of its landmark report during negotiations here.
Discussions were said to have been robust, with the US and other delegations keen to moderate language.
The summary will be officially launched by UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon on Saturday.
It brings together elements of the three reports that the Nobel Prize-winning IPCC has already released this year, on the science of climate change, impacts and adaptation, and options for mitigating the problem.
Among its top-line conclusions are that climate change is "unequivocal", that humankind's emissions of greenhouse gases are more than 90% likely to be the main cause, and that impacts can be reduced at reasonable cost.
The synthesis summary being discussed here in Valencia strengthens the language of those earlier reports with a warning that climate change may bring "abrupt and irreversible" impacts.
Such impacts could include the fast melting of glaciers and species extinctions.
"Climate change is here, it's impacting our lives and our economies, and we need to do something about it," commented Hans Verolme, director of the climate change programme with the environmental group WWF.
"After this report, there are no politicians left who can argue they don't know what climate change is or they don't know what to do about it."
Local witnesses
At a news conference, WWF presented testimonies from "climate change witnesses" in various parts of the world.
Speaking by video link, Australian scientists and fishermen spoke of the changes they were seeing on the Great Barrier Reef. And Olav Mathis Eira, a Sami reindeer herder from Norway, said that his communities are seeing weather patterns unprecedented in their oral history.
"Winter is one and a half months later than it used to be," he said. "We observed birds and insects that do not have a name in Sami."
The 20-page IPCC synthesis summary is due to be accompanied by a longer, more detailed document, following discussions here.
The findings will feed into the next round of negotiations on the UN climate convention and Kyoto Protocol, which open in Bali on 3 December.
Climate change document completed
Arthur Max, Associated Press, Yahoo News 16 Nov 07;
Working until dawn, negotiators on Friday concluded a policy guide for governments on global warming that declares climate change is here and is getting worse, one of its authors said.
Provisional agreement on the text — which is about 20 pages and summarizes thousands of pages of data and projections — required compromises among the more than 140 delegations, but resulted in a "good and balanced document," said Bert Metz, a Dutch scientist who helped draft the report.
The brief Summary for Policymakers is expected to get final approval later Friday after a longer version of about 70 pages is reviewed and adopted. It is to be released Saturday by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Until then, the text is supposed to remain confidential.
The paper will be an "instant guide" to policymakers at a critical meeting next month in Indonesia, which could launch a round of complex talks on a new international accord for controlling carbon emissions and other human activity that is heating the planet.
Though it contains no previously unpublished material, the summary pulls together the central elements of three lengthy reports released earlier this year by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
They describe observations of the changing climate, the potentially disastrous impacts of global warming and the tools available to slow the warming trend.
"Warming of the climate system is unequivocal," the summary begins — a statement meant to dispel any skepticism about the reality of climate change — according to a person familiar with the final draft who requested anonymity because the summary was not yet public.
The document "is a clear message to policymakers," said Hans Verolme, of the World Wide Fund for Nature, one of the environmental groups acting as observers. "The scientists have done their job. They certainly deserved the Nobel Prize. Now the question is, what are the policymakers going to do with it?"
The panel shared this year's Nobel Peace Prize with Vice President Al Gore.
The meeting in the Indonesian resort of Bali starting Dec. 3 will discuss the next step in combating climate change after the measures adopted in the Kyoto Protocol expire in 2012.
The Kyoto accord, negotiated in 1997, obliges 36 industrial countries to radically reduce their carbon emissions by 2012, but has no clear plan for what happens after that date. Though the United States rejected the Kyoto accord, it will attend the Bali meeting.
Participants in the Valencia meeting said the U.S. delegation questioned the most hard-hitting statements in the summary. But key language remained, they said on condition of anonymity, including a warning that climate change could lead to "abrupt and irreversible" results, such as the widespread extinction of species.
Delegates fought long and hard for the inclusion of issues of special interest to them: mountainous countries wanted a reference to melting glaciers; island states wanted to include warnings that oceans are becoming more acidic; poor countries insisted on firm language on "adaptation," implying international funding to help them cope with the effects of global warming.
The IPCC reports draw on the research of thousands of scientists and is reviewed by about 2,500 experts, then distilled and drafted by several hundred authors.
Metz said the discussions that began Monday were "contentious in a number of places," and required compromise language. "If I had written it myself, I might have done it a bit different," he said, though he added he was satisfied with the outcome.
"It says in crisp language: This is the problem, and this is what we can do to stop it," said Verolme, the WWF campaigner.
Climate change talks reach agreement
Arthur Max, Associated Press, Yahoo News 17 Nov 07
Delegates from more than 140 countries agreed Friday on a scientific "instant guide" for policy makers, stating more forcefully than ever that climate change has begun and threatens to irreversibly alter the planet.
The document, summarizing the scientific consensus on human-induced climate change, will be distributed to delegates at a crucial meeting in Indonesia next month that is intended to launch a political process on international cooperation to control global warming.
Five days of sometimes tense negotiations ended before dawn with the approval of a 20-page summary of thousands of pages of data and computer projections compiled over the last six years by the Nobel Peace prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The report does not commit participating governments to any course of action but it is important because it is adopted by consensus, meaning those countries accept the underlying science and cannot disavow its conclusions. It provides a common scientific base line for the political talks.
"This is a groundbreaking document that will pave the way for deep emissions cuts by developing countries," said Stephan Singer, a climate specialist for the World Wide Fund for Nature.
The report describes how climate systems are changing and why, the effects it is having on mankind and ecosystems, and various scenarios of future impacts, depending on how quickly action is taken to slow the trend.
The summary and a longer "synthesis report" were expected to be formally adopted after proofreading. They will be released Saturday at a news conference attended by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
"Warming of the climate system is unequivocal," the summary begins, in a statement meant to dispel any skepticism about the reality of climate change, said participants in the meeting.
In a startling and much-debated conclusion, the document warns that human activity risks causing "abrupt or irreversible changes" on Earth, including the widespread extinction of species and a dramatic rise in sea levels before the end of this century, they said on condition of anonymity because the details are supposed to remain confidential until Saturday.
"I think overall it is a good and balanced document," said Bert Metz, an eminent Dutch scientist and one of the 40 authors of the draft. "In the end, a lot of people had to compromise," he said.
Though it contains no previously unpublished material, the summary pulls together the central elements of three lengthy reports the IPCC released earlier this year. Boiling down the 3,000 pages into about 20 was "quite a challenge," said Metz.
The agreement was seen as a personal triumph for the IPCC chairman, Rajendra Pachauri of India, who presided with no-nonsense efficiency and bulldozed through compromise language. Pachauri, who will accept the IPCC's Nobel Peace prize in Oslo on Dec. 10 along with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, is expected to stand for re-election as head of the IPCC next year, delegates said.
Delegates said the talks this week were difficult, and sometimes bogged down for hours over a brief phrase.
The meeting in the Indonesian resort of Bali starting Dec. 3 will discuss the next step in combating climate change after the measures adopted in the Kyoto Protocol expire in five years. Kyoto obliges 36 industrial countries to radically reduce their carbon emissions by 2012, but has no clear plan for what happens after that date.
Organizers say the new "road map" emerging from Bali should draw in the United States, which rejected the Kyoto accord and has tried to enlist other countries in voluntary schemes to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and invest in technology research.
Participants in the Valencia meeting said the U.S. delegation questioned the most hard-hitting statements in the summary that implied the urgency of reining in carbon emissions. But the final text retained key language, they said.
Less than three weeks before a crucial conference on climate change, UN experts agreed Friday on a draft report that warns global warming may have far-reaching and irreversible consequences.
The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) encapsulates a massive overview of the global-warming problem, with the goal of guiding policymakers for the next five years.
Delegates on the paramount scientific authority agreed the draft summary after night-long negotiations, chief French delegate Marc Gillet told AFP.
Human activities "could lead to abrupt or irreversible climate changes and impacts," the agreed text said.
The report will be officially adopted on Saturday, followed by a press conference attended by United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon, delegates aid.
The so-called synthesis report summarises three massive documents issued this year covering the evidence for climate change; the present and possible future impacts of it; and the options for tackling the peril.
"The synthesis is quite balanced. It is a good summary of what was described in the three reports," said Gillet.
After Saturday, attention shifts to a key meeting in Bali, Indonesia, where governments will be tasked with setting down a "roadmap" for negotiations culminating in a deal to slash carbon emissions and help developing nations cope with climate change.
The IPCC experts agreed that the rise in Earth's temperature observed in the past few decades was principally due to human causes, not natural ones, as "climate skeptics" often aver.
The impacts of climate change are already visible, in the form of retreating glaciers and snow loss in alpine regions, thinning Arctic summer sea ice and thawing permafrost, according to the three IPCC reports issued earlier this year predicted.
But sometimes sharp disagreement emerged during the five days of negotiations in Valencia to hammer out the summary, even though the main findings remained untouched.
US delegates in particular said references to "irreversible" climate change and impacts were imprecise.
They argued, for example, that the melting of glaciers or ice sheets -- which could raise ocean levels by several meters (a dozen feet) -- was not "irreversible" as ice could eventually reform.
"But we are not dealing with geological time scales of tens of thousands of years," said one delegate, irked by this line of reasoning. "We are talking about dire consequences to humans and the environment in the coming decades."
By 2100, global average surface temperatures could rise by between 1.1 C (1.98 F) and 6.4 C (11.52 F) compared to 1980-99 levels, while sea levels will rise by between 18 and 59 centimetres (7.2 and 23.2 inches), according to the IPCC's forecast.
Heatwaves, rainstorms, drought, tropical cyclones and surges in sea level are among the events expected to become more frequent, more widespread and/or more intense this century.
As a result, water shortages, hunger, flooding and damage to homes will be a heightened threat.
"All countries" will be affected, according to the IPCC. Those bearing the brunt, though, will be poor countries which incidentally bear the least responsibility for creating the problem.
The IPCC won this year's Nobel Peace Prize alongside climate campaigner and former US vice president Al Gore.
It has been widely praised for the impartiality and objectivity of its reports, although this year some experts have said its review process may be too conservative and slow-moving to assess what now transpires to be a fast-moving problem.
This year's is the fourth assessment report since the IPCC was established in 1988 by the WMO and UN Environment Programme (UNEP).
The December 3-14 conference in Bali aims at deepening and accelerating cuts in greenhouse-gas pollution after 2012, when current pledges under the UN's Kyoto Protocol expire.
There is now broad agreement on the scope of the problem, but countries remain sharply divided on how to tackle it.
The United States and China, which together account for roughly half of all emissions, baulk at setting legally-binding targets for curbing their pollution, although the reasons for their objections are different.
IPCC to warn of 'abrupt' warming
Richard Black, BBC News 16 Nov 07
Climate change may bring "abrupt and irreversible" impacts, the UN's climate advisory panel is set to announce.
Delegates to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) agreed a summary of its landmark report during negotiations here.
Discussions were said to have been robust, with the US and other delegations keen to moderate language.
The summary will be officially launched by UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon on Saturday.
It brings together elements of the three reports that the Nobel Prize-winning IPCC has already released this year, on the science of climate change, impacts and adaptation, and options for mitigating the problem.
Among its top-line conclusions are that climate change is "unequivocal", that humankind's emissions of greenhouse gases are more than 90% likely to be the main cause, and that impacts can be reduced at reasonable cost.
The synthesis summary being discussed here in Valencia strengthens the language of those earlier reports with a warning that climate change may bring "abrupt and irreversible" impacts.
Such impacts could include the fast melting of glaciers and species extinctions.
"Climate change is here, it's impacting our lives and our economies, and we need to do something about it," commented Hans Verolme, director of the climate change programme with the environmental group WWF.
"After this report, there are no politicians left who can argue they don't know what climate change is or they don't know what to do about it."
Local witnesses
At a news conference, WWF presented testimonies from "climate change witnesses" in various parts of the world.
Speaking by video link, Australian scientists and fishermen spoke of the changes they were seeing on the Great Barrier Reef. And Olav Mathis Eira, a Sami reindeer herder from Norway, said that his communities are seeing weather patterns unprecedented in their oral history.
"Winter is one and a half months later than it used to be," he said. "We observed birds and insects that do not have a name in Sami."
The 20-page IPCC synthesis summary is due to be accompanied by a longer, more detailed document, following discussions here.
The findings will feed into the next round of negotiations on the UN climate convention and Kyoto Protocol, which open in Bali on 3 December.
Climate change document completed
Arthur Max, Associated Press, Yahoo News 16 Nov 07;
Working until dawn, negotiators on Friday concluded a policy guide for governments on global warming that declares climate change is here and is getting worse, one of its authors said.
Provisional agreement on the text — which is about 20 pages and summarizes thousands of pages of data and projections — required compromises among the more than 140 delegations, but resulted in a "good and balanced document," said Bert Metz, a Dutch scientist who helped draft the report.
The brief Summary for Policymakers is expected to get final approval later Friday after a longer version of about 70 pages is reviewed and adopted. It is to be released Saturday by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Until then, the text is supposed to remain confidential.
The paper will be an "instant guide" to policymakers at a critical meeting next month in Indonesia, which could launch a round of complex talks on a new international accord for controlling carbon emissions and other human activity that is heating the planet.
Though it contains no previously unpublished material, the summary pulls together the central elements of three lengthy reports released earlier this year by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
They describe observations of the changing climate, the potentially disastrous impacts of global warming and the tools available to slow the warming trend.
"Warming of the climate system is unequivocal," the summary begins — a statement meant to dispel any skepticism about the reality of climate change — according to a person familiar with the final draft who requested anonymity because the summary was not yet public.
The document "is a clear message to policymakers," said Hans Verolme, of the World Wide Fund for Nature, one of the environmental groups acting as observers. "The scientists have done their job. They certainly deserved the Nobel Prize. Now the question is, what are the policymakers going to do with it?"
The panel shared this year's Nobel Peace Prize with Vice President Al Gore.
The meeting in the Indonesian resort of Bali starting Dec. 3 will discuss the next step in combating climate change after the measures adopted in the Kyoto Protocol expire in 2012.
The Kyoto accord, negotiated in 1997, obliges 36 industrial countries to radically reduce their carbon emissions by 2012, but has no clear plan for what happens after that date. Though the United States rejected the Kyoto accord, it will attend the Bali meeting.
Participants in the Valencia meeting said the U.S. delegation questioned the most hard-hitting statements in the summary. But key language remained, they said on condition of anonymity, including a warning that climate change could lead to "abrupt and irreversible" results, such as the widespread extinction of species.
Delegates fought long and hard for the inclusion of issues of special interest to them: mountainous countries wanted a reference to melting glaciers; island states wanted to include warnings that oceans are becoming more acidic; poor countries insisted on firm language on "adaptation," implying international funding to help them cope with the effects of global warming.
The IPCC reports draw on the research of thousands of scientists and is reviewed by about 2,500 experts, then distilled and drafted by several hundred authors.
Metz said the discussions that began Monday were "contentious in a number of places," and required compromise language. "If I had written it myself, I might have done it a bit different," he said, though he added he was satisfied with the outcome.
"It says in crisp language: This is the problem, and this is what we can do to stop it," said Verolme, the WWF campaigner.
Climate change talks reach agreement
Arthur Max, Associated Press, Yahoo News 17 Nov 07
Delegates from more than 140 countries agreed Friday on a scientific "instant guide" for policy makers, stating more forcefully than ever that climate change has begun and threatens to irreversibly alter the planet.
The document, summarizing the scientific consensus on human-induced climate change, will be distributed to delegates at a crucial meeting in Indonesia next month that is intended to launch a political process on international cooperation to control global warming.
Five days of sometimes tense negotiations ended before dawn with the approval of a 20-page summary of thousands of pages of data and computer projections compiled over the last six years by the Nobel Peace prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The report does not commit participating governments to any course of action but it is important because it is adopted by consensus, meaning those countries accept the underlying science and cannot disavow its conclusions. It provides a common scientific base line for the political talks.
"This is a groundbreaking document that will pave the way for deep emissions cuts by developing countries," said Stephan Singer, a climate specialist for the World Wide Fund for Nature.
The report describes how climate systems are changing and why, the effects it is having on mankind and ecosystems, and various scenarios of future impacts, depending on how quickly action is taken to slow the trend.
The summary and a longer "synthesis report" were expected to be formally adopted after proofreading. They will be released Saturday at a news conference attended by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
"Warming of the climate system is unequivocal," the summary begins, in a statement meant to dispel any skepticism about the reality of climate change, said participants in the meeting.
In a startling and much-debated conclusion, the document warns that human activity risks causing "abrupt or irreversible changes" on Earth, including the widespread extinction of species and a dramatic rise in sea levels before the end of this century, they said on condition of anonymity because the details are supposed to remain confidential until Saturday.
"I think overall it is a good and balanced document," said Bert Metz, an eminent Dutch scientist and one of the 40 authors of the draft. "In the end, a lot of people had to compromise," he said.
Though it contains no previously unpublished material, the summary pulls together the central elements of three lengthy reports the IPCC released earlier this year. Boiling down the 3,000 pages into about 20 was "quite a challenge," said Metz.
The agreement was seen as a personal triumph for the IPCC chairman, Rajendra Pachauri of India, who presided with no-nonsense efficiency and bulldozed through compromise language. Pachauri, who will accept the IPCC's Nobel Peace prize in Oslo on Dec. 10 along with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, is expected to stand for re-election as head of the IPCC next year, delegates said.
Delegates said the talks this week were difficult, and sometimes bogged down for hours over a brief phrase.
The meeting in the Indonesian resort of Bali starting Dec. 3 will discuss the next step in combating climate change after the measures adopted in the Kyoto Protocol expire in five years. Kyoto obliges 36 industrial countries to radically reduce their carbon emissions by 2012, but has no clear plan for what happens after that date.
Organizers say the new "road map" emerging from Bali should draw in the United States, which rejected the Kyoto accord and has tried to enlist other countries in voluntary schemes to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and invest in technology research.
Participants in the Valencia meeting said the U.S. delegation questioned the most hard-hitting statements in the summary that implied the urgency of reining in carbon emissions. But the final text retained key language, they said.
Japan said to unveil green initiative at Asia summit
Channel NewsAsia 16 Nov 07
TOKYO: Japan plans to pledge US$1.8 billion worth of low-interest loans to Asian countries to help them combat environmental pollution at a summit next week in Singapore, reports said Friday.
Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda plans to unveil the initiative to help fight air, water and other pollution when he attends the East Asia summit, the Nikkei daily and Jiji Press news agency said.
Under the scheme, Japan would extend low-interest loans totalling 200 billion yen (US$1.8 billion), they said without identifying their sources.
The Nikkei economic daily said Japan would extend the loans over five years and would also accept some 1,000 people for training in environmental technologies.
The loans could be used to improve sewage processing and set up facilities to reduce emissions of sulfur, a contributor to acid rain, the Nikkei said.
No immediate confirmation was available on the details.
However, chief government spokesman Nobutaka Machimura told reporters "Japan wants to unveil an environmental initiative in East Asia" at the upcoming summit.
Environmental pollution is worsening in Asia as its economies grow rapidly. China and India are also participating in the East Asia summit.
Japan has long relied on aid as a key tool of its foreign policy and considers Southeast Asia a key region to exert influence.
Japan, home of the Kyoto Protocol, has earlier promised aid for developing nations to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions.
- AFP/yb
TOKYO: Japan plans to pledge US$1.8 billion worth of low-interest loans to Asian countries to help them combat environmental pollution at a summit next week in Singapore, reports said Friday.
Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda plans to unveil the initiative to help fight air, water and other pollution when he attends the East Asia summit, the Nikkei daily and Jiji Press news agency said.
Under the scheme, Japan would extend low-interest loans totalling 200 billion yen (US$1.8 billion), they said without identifying their sources.
The Nikkei economic daily said Japan would extend the loans over five years and would also accept some 1,000 people for training in environmental technologies.
The loans could be used to improve sewage processing and set up facilities to reduce emissions of sulfur, a contributor to acid rain, the Nikkei said.
No immediate confirmation was available on the details.
However, chief government spokesman Nobutaka Machimura told reporters "Japan wants to unveil an environmental initiative in East Asia" at the upcoming summit.
Environmental pollution is worsening in Asia as its economies grow rapidly. China and India are also participating in the East Asia summit.
Japan has long relied on aid as a key tool of its foreign policy and considers Southeast Asia a key region to exert influence.
Japan, home of the Kyoto Protocol, has earlier promised aid for developing nations to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions.
- AFP/yb
NEW Publication: Seagrass-Watch e-bulletin
Seagrass-Watch website 16 Nov 07
A monthly e-bulletin of news about seagrasses around the world
This month, the articles include:
PTP, MNSJ Moot Idea To Gazette Pulau Merambung (Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia)
Developments at Sungei Pulai, Johor which right opposite our TeamSeagrass Tuas monitoring site.
Seagrass survey in Klong Tub Lamu (Thailand)
This seagrass population is the only population that survived the tsunami.
and more...
Seahorses released into Sydney Harbour (Australia)
Scientists: Revise mining law to prevent marine degradation (Philippines)
Call for action to save Wales marine life (United Kingdom)
Climate change already affecting Bay, experts say (Seven Valleys,PA,USA)
Seagrass restoration in Florida Bay restores boat grounding sites (St. Petersburg,FL,USA)
Marawah is UAE's first biosphere reserve (Dubai,United Arab Emirates)
CBBF honors unsung heroes (Corpus Christi, TX, USA)
Channel deepening is good for the environment: Premier (Victoria, Australia)
Government releases management plan for Shoalwater Islands Marine Park (Western Australia)
Opponents lash out as bay dredging gets OK (Victoria, Australia)
Seagrass habitats crucial to fish production in Corner Inlet (Victoria, Australia).
Download the PDF file and subscribe to the bulletin
A monthly e-bulletin of news about seagrasses around the world
This month, the articles include:
PTP, MNSJ Moot Idea To Gazette Pulau Merambung (Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia)
Developments at Sungei Pulai, Johor which right opposite our TeamSeagrass Tuas monitoring site.
Seagrass survey in Klong Tub Lamu (Thailand)
This seagrass population is the only population that survived the tsunami.
and more...
Seahorses released into Sydney Harbour (Australia)
Scientists: Revise mining law to prevent marine degradation (Philippines)
Call for action to save Wales marine life (United Kingdom)
Climate change already affecting Bay, experts say (Seven Valleys,PA,USA)
Seagrass restoration in Florida Bay restores boat grounding sites (St. Petersburg,FL,USA)
Marawah is UAE's first biosphere reserve (Dubai,United Arab Emirates)
CBBF honors unsung heroes (Corpus Christi, TX, USA)
Channel deepening is good for the environment: Premier (Victoria, Australia)
Government releases management plan for Shoalwater Islands Marine Park (Western Australia)
Opponents lash out as bay dredging gets OK (Victoria, Australia)
Seagrass habitats crucial to fish production in Corner Inlet (Victoria, Australia).
Download the PDF file and subscribe to the bulletin
Black Sea to take years to recover from oil spill
WWF website 16 Nov 07;
Moscow, Russia – The oil spill that wreaked havoc in the Kerch Strait leading to the Black Sea last week will take at least 5 to 10 years for the marine environment to recover, says WWF.
According to WWF specialists, the 2000-tonne spill has badly affected the local fishing industry. Fish caught in the Kerch Strait are not safe for consumption.
The spill has also threatened birds. About 11 endangered species inhabit the area around the strait, including the Dalmatian pelican and great black-headed gull, and many more migrating birds will be wintering in this area in the coming months.
Thanks to the efforts of clean-up crews, including WWF staff and members, some birds have been rescued. However, these activities can only help save a very small percentage of the thousands of affected birds. Two dolphins have also been found washed up on shore where clean-up operations are being conducted, but their chances of survival are slim. The Black Sea is home to common and bottlenose dolphins.
“Although it is practically impossible to completely eliminate the damage caused by the large oil spill,” said Igor Chestin, CEO of WWF-Russia, “we believe that to avoid such disasters in the future drastic changes need to be made in the oil transportation system; oil pollution laws need to be enacted.”
To avoid such accidents in the future, WWF and other environmental NGOs are developing recommendations for the Russian government, which include:
• Local volunteers should be trained to respond to oil spills (WWF has already been training clean-up teams on the Russian coast of the Barents Sea for several years).
• Oil export via the river-sea corridor should be stopped, and river vessels not suited for marine conditions should be instructed to enter ports.
• Russia should develop a legislative base for oil spills, similar to the US Oil Pollution Act adopted after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989, and should set up an independent agency responsible for environmental protection.
According to Alexey Knizhnikov, head of WWF-Russia’s oil and gas project, there is a prepared draft law introducing the “polluter pays” principle and environmental insurance. However, they have not been approved by the State Duma (Russia’s lower house of parliament).
“If these draft law is approved, many problems will be solved, as companies will feel more responsible for the risks they take,” says Knizhnikov.
“We hope that this accident will spur the process in adopting these laws and creating such an agency.”
Moscow, Russia – The oil spill that wreaked havoc in the Kerch Strait leading to the Black Sea last week will take at least 5 to 10 years for the marine environment to recover, says WWF.
According to WWF specialists, the 2000-tonne spill has badly affected the local fishing industry. Fish caught in the Kerch Strait are not safe for consumption.
The spill has also threatened birds. About 11 endangered species inhabit the area around the strait, including the Dalmatian pelican and great black-headed gull, and many more migrating birds will be wintering in this area in the coming months.
Thanks to the efforts of clean-up crews, including WWF staff and members, some birds have been rescued. However, these activities can only help save a very small percentage of the thousands of affected birds. Two dolphins have also been found washed up on shore where clean-up operations are being conducted, but their chances of survival are slim. The Black Sea is home to common and bottlenose dolphins.
“Although it is practically impossible to completely eliminate the damage caused by the large oil spill,” said Igor Chestin, CEO of WWF-Russia, “we believe that to avoid such disasters in the future drastic changes need to be made in the oil transportation system; oil pollution laws need to be enacted.”
To avoid such accidents in the future, WWF and other environmental NGOs are developing recommendations for the Russian government, which include:
• Local volunteers should be trained to respond to oil spills (WWF has already been training clean-up teams on the Russian coast of the Barents Sea for several years).
• Oil export via the river-sea corridor should be stopped, and river vessels not suited for marine conditions should be instructed to enter ports.
• Russia should develop a legislative base for oil spills, similar to the US Oil Pollution Act adopted after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989, and should set up an independent agency responsible for environmental protection.
According to Alexey Knizhnikov, head of WWF-Russia’s oil and gas project, there is a prepared draft law introducing the “polluter pays” principle and environmental insurance. However, they have not been approved by the State Duma (Russia’s lower house of parliament).
“If these draft law is approved, many problems will be solved, as companies will feel more responsible for the risks they take,” says Knizhnikov.
“We hope that this accident will spur the process in adopting these laws and creating such an agency.”
Climate witnesses demand climate solutions
WWF website 16 Nov 07
Valencia, Spain – Real problems for real people caused by climate change demand real solutions, says the latest research from WWF, as it presents a new tool for concerned citizens to register and verify their observations of global warming.
The WWF initiative documents the experiences of people who are witnessing the impacts of climate change on their local environment and lifestyles.
"Around the world, people are witnessing the impacts of climate change and what they see is consistent with many of the findings of the IPCC’s latest global climate report," says Hans Verolme, Director of WWF's Global Climate Change Programme.
The testimony of these “Climate Witnesses” is reviewed by a member of the programme’s Science Advisory Panel to establish if the impacts reported are consistent with known trends, and if these stories can be placed in the context of climate change. Over 100 leading climate scientists from around the world have so far joined the panel.
“Climate change is still viewed by some as an abstract and distant threat,” Verolme adds.
“The Climate Witness Programme shows that it’s something that’s happening now and affecting the lives of people around the globe.”
Eye witness accounts
According to the IPCC, there have been eight mass bleaching events on the Great Barrier Reef since 1979, triggered by unusually high sea surface temperatures.
“Aside from my concern about the impacts on the health of the reef, my thoughts turned to the impacts that coral bleaching may have on my business and community,” says John Rumney, a dive business owner in Australia.
“I have lost about 10 per cent of my dive sites in the past four years and I know what’s happened in the Caribbean and the Maldives. If that happens here, what will we show the guests?”
Climate research indicates that there will be higher temperatures and more precipitation, particularly in winter, in northern Norway. Icing, but also deeper snow cover, in mid-winter will probably cause problems for such activities as reindeer herding.
“The snow gets icy from the rain so that the reindeer cannot get through down to the food which they depend on to survive in the winter,” says reindeer herder Olav Mathis from Eira, Norway.
“I have three sons. One of them will hopefully keep to the family tradition of reindeer herding. But it is no longer a good life. It is an insecure future.”
By collecting these stories WWF wants to increase the awareness of people around the world that changes are already happening in many places. The global conservation organization also wants to impress upon decision-makers and the public the need for urgent and serious action to stop climate change.
Links
The WWF Climate Witness Progamme website with a world map of stories already shared. Click on a button to share YOUR story.
Valencia, Spain – Real problems for real people caused by climate change demand real solutions, says the latest research from WWF, as it presents a new tool for concerned citizens to register and verify their observations of global warming.
The WWF initiative documents the experiences of people who are witnessing the impacts of climate change on their local environment and lifestyles.
"Around the world, people are witnessing the impacts of climate change and what they see is consistent with many of the findings of the IPCC’s latest global climate report," says Hans Verolme, Director of WWF's Global Climate Change Programme.
The testimony of these “Climate Witnesses” is reviewed by a member of the programme’s Science Advisory Panel to establish if the impacts reported are consistent with known trends, and if these stories can be placed in the context of climate change. Over 100 leading climate scientists from around the world have so far joined the panel.
“Climate change is still viewed by some as an abstract and distant threat,” Verolme adds.
“The Climate Witness Programme shows that it’s something that’s happening now and affecting the lives of people around the globe.”
Eye witness accounts
According to the IPCC, there have been eight mass bleaching events on the Great Barrier Reef since 1979, triggered by unusually high sea surface temperatures.
“Aside from my concern about the impacts on the health of the reef, my thoughts turned to the impacts that coral bleaching may have on my business and community,” says John Rumney, a dive business owner in Australia.
“I have lost about 10 per cent of my dive sites in the past four years and I know what’s happened in the Caribbean and the Maldives. If that happens here, what will we show the guests?”
Climate research indicates that there will be higher temperatures and more precipitation, particularly in winter, in northern Norway. Icing, but also deeper snow cover, in mid-winter will probably cause problems for such activities as reindeer herding.
“The snow gets icy from the rain so that the reindeer cannot get through down to the food which they depend on to survive in the winter,” says reindeer herder Olav Mathis from Eira, Norway.
“I have three sons. One of them will hopefully keep to the family tradition of reindeer herding. But it is no longer a good life. It is an insecure future.”
By collecting these stories WWF wants to increase the awareness of people around the world that changes are already happening in many places. The global conservation organization also wants to impress upon decision-makers and the public the need for urgent and serious action to stop climate change.
Links
The WWF Climate Witness Progamme website with a world map of stories already shared. Click on a button to share YOUR story.
Russian Oil Spill Killing Dolphins, says Watchdog
November 15, 2007 (Reuters)
By Dmitry Solovyov
MOSCOW (Reuters) - A fuel oil spill from a Russian tanker into the Black Sea is killing dolphins and the nearby Sea of Azov may suffer heavy pollution if urgent measures are not taken, Russia's environment watchdog said on Thursday.
A storm on Sunday broke up the tanker and sank at least four freighters while crippling other vessels in the narrow Kerch Strait between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. Four seamen were drowned and four others are missing.
Oleg Mitvol, deputy head of state environment watchdog Rosprirodnadzor, said the oil had polluted a 50-km (30-mile) long stretch of Black Sea coastline and rescue workers would have to remove 10,000 tonnes of oily sludge from the shore.
Mitvol said around 1,500 tonnes of fuel oil was still afloat in the water, killing thousands of birds and fish. "Unfortunately, not only fish are affected, but sea mammals as well -- we have documented cases of deaths of dolphins," he told a news conference. "The fact that dolphins and birds listed in Russia's Red Book (of endangered species) are dying is very sad indeed ."
Environmentalists say the Black Sea dolphin is on the verge of extinction. The U.N. Environment Programme has declared 2007 the Year of the Dolphin.
Mitvol said environmental experts from Belgium, Brazil and the United States would arrive in the area in the next few days.
"Volunteers from all across Russia are heading there, as well as groups from Greenpeace and WWF," he said.
OLD ROWS WORSEN CRISIS
The Kerch Strait separates the port of Kerch on Ukraine's Crimea Peninsula from Russia.
Mitvol hit out at the head of the port, saying he had prevented storm-battered ships from using a channel alongside the port to reach calmer waters.
Mitvol also said that Ukrainian environmental inspectors had tried on Wednesday to stop Russian clean-up workers who were pumping the remaining oil out of the tanks of the partially-sunken tanker.
He said Ukrainian authorities were resisting a Russian proposal to contain the oil spill by building a dam across one of the channels in the Kerch Strait.
The area has been the subject of a territorial dispute between Russia and Ukraine. The two have had fraught relations since a 2004 bloodless revolution brought a Western-leaning president to power in Kiev.
Russia's attempts to build a breakwater stretching from its southern Krasnodar Region to Tuzla sparked a fierce territorial dispute between Moscow and Kiev four years ago. The row has not yet been resolved.
"Independence issues do not matter at a time of an ecological crisis. We share one planet," said Mitvol.
(Reporting by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Richard Williams)
By Dmitry Solovyov
MOSCOW (Reuters) - A fuel oil spill from a Russian tanker into the Black Sea is killing dolphins and the nearby Sea of Azov may suffer heavy pollution if urgent measures are not taken, Russia's environment watchdog said on Thursday.
A storm on Sunday broke up the tanker and sank at least four freighters while crippling other vessels in the narrow Kerch Strait between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. Four seamen were drowned and four others are missing.
Oleg Mitvol, deputy head of state environment watchdog Rosprirodnadzor, said the oil had polluted a 50-km (30-mile) long stretch of Black Sea coastline and rescue workers would have to remove 10,000 tonnes of oily sludge from the shore.
Mitvol said around 1,500 tonnes of fuel oil was still afloat in the water, killing thousands of birds and fish. "Unfortunately, not only fish are affected, but sea mammals as well -- we have documented cases of deaths of dolphins," he told a news conference. "The fact that dolphins and birds listed in Russia's Red Book (of endangered species) are dying is very sad indeed ."
Environmentalists say the Black Sea dolphin is on the verge of extinction. The U.N. Environment Programme has declared 2007 the Year of the Dolphin.
Mitvol said environmental experts from Belgium, Brazil and the United States would arrive in the area in the next few days.
"Volunteers from all across Russia are heading there, as well as groups from Greenpeace and WWF," he said.
OLD ROWS WORSEN CRISIS
The Kerch Strait separates the port of Kerch on Ukraine's Crimea Peninsula from Russia.
Mitvol hit out at the head of the port, saying he had prevented storm-battered ships from using a channel alongside the port to reach calmer waters.
Mitvol also said that Ukrainian environmental inspectors had tried on Wednesday to stop Russian clean-up workers who were pumping the remaining oil out of the tanks of the partially-sunken tanker.
He said Ukrainian authorities were resisting a Russian proposal to contain the oil spill by building a dam across one of the channels in the Kerch Strait.
The area has been the subject of a territorial dispute between Russia and Ukraine. The two have had fraught relations since a 2004 bloodless revolution brought a Western-leaning president to power in Kiev.
Russia's attempts to build a breakwater stretching from its southern Krasnodar Region to Tuzla sparked a fierce territorial dispute between Moscow and Kiev four years ago. The row has not yet been resolved.
"Independence issues do not matter at a time of an ecological crisis. We share one planet," said Mitvol.
(Reporting by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Richard Williams)
Scientists catalogue oceans amid human, climate threats
David Brooks, Yahoo News 16 Nov 07;
Amid rapid declines in fish stocks and fears about the impact of climate change, scientists are nearing the end of the first global attempt to stocktake the astonishing range of life in our oceans.
But alongside the discovery of a hairy "yeti" crab or revelations about the previously unknown migration patterns of the great white shark is the knowledge that these are just a drop in the ocean of what remains undiscovered.
A conference in Auckland this week of around 200 of nearly 2,000 researchers from 80 countries working on the Census of Marine Life have been discussing how to pull together their findings before the census ends in 2010.
So far 17 studies ranging from bacteria to the ocean's largest predators has discovered more than 5,300 new marine life forms.
To put that in context, around 230,000 marine species are known to scientists although estimates of the total number in the world's oceans and seas are between 1.4 million and 1.6 million.
In the 2002-03 year, 1,555 marine species were newly identified, said Dr Dennis Gordon, a principal scientist at New Zealand's national Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research.
Working at that rate, it would take up to 881 years to finish the task of describing the marine species on the planet, Gordon told the conference.
But the principal scientist of the census, Dr Ron O'Dor, a professor of biology at Canada's Dalhousie University, said the census was opening up new areas of research.
"It's as important to know what you don't know as it is to know what you know," he said.
The projects, which include examining life on undersea mountains and under 400 metres (437 yards) of Antarctic ice, are throwing light on previously unknown species and regions.
"The census will provide us an objective robust benchmark by which future change in marine life can be assessed," said Dr Michael Stoddart, chief scientist to Australia's National Antarctic Programme and project leader for the census's Antarctic work.
New technology is allowing researchers to go deeper into the ocean than ever before and to follow large marine animals such as sharks, turtles and seals on their migrations.
A study of 22 Californian sea lions which migrated unusually far out into the Pacific Ocean in recent years due to warmer than normal sea temperatures provides clues to how marine life could respond to climate change.
"By following how these animals respond to the changing oceanography, we will get an idea of how they will respond to a changing habitat in the future," said Daniel Costa a University of California professor and project leader of a census project to tag large Pacific predators.
Tagging of the previously mysterious great white sharks along the Californian coast showed they travelled across the Pacific to Hawaii in spring before returning to the mainland coast in autumn.
Stoddart said climate change is bringing about rapid changes in the Antarctic environment, where 18 expeditions are heading over the southern summer.
"So there is an added impetus and added urgency for us to work in the high latitude southern region," he said.
On the other end of the size scale, even less is known about marine microbes, including bacteria and viruses. Yet they add up to as much as 98 percent of the total biomass of marine life, the conference was told.
To provide some historical context for the census, one study has been looking at how marine life had changed in past centuries.
Researchers have used fossils, archaeological records and historical documents including fishing logs to trace changes in 12 estuary areas, mainly in Europe and North America.
Dr Heike Lotze, also of Dalhousie University, said the project showed about seven percent of species had become extinct globally or locally in the estuary areas and 36 percent had collapsed to less than 10 percent of previous numbers.
"Human exploitation was the most important reason for extinctions, followed by habitat loss and pollution," said Lotze.
But the researchers are also looking to the future, especially as the end of the first census draws near.
They want to ensure that support can be found for funding to ensure there is a second census leading up to 2020 as human and climate threats put mounting pressure on the oceans.
"Can we convey the urgency of continuing our efforts over the next decade?" challenged Rutgers University professor, Dr J. Frederick Grassle, who chairs the census scientific steering committee.
Links
Census of Marine Life website with links to photos and reports of what scientists have discovered about our oceans.
Amid rapid declines in fish stocks and fears about the impact of climate change, scientists are nearing the end of the first global attempt to stocktake the astonishing range of life in our oceans.
But alongside the discovery of a hairy "yeti" crab or revelations about the previously unknown migration patterns of the great white shark is the knowledge that these are just a drop in the ocean of what remains undiscovered.
A conference in Auckland this week of around 200 of nearly 2,000 researchers from 80 countries working on the Census of Marine Life have been discussing how to pull together their findings before the census ends in 2010.
So far 17 studies ranging from bacteria to the ocean's largest predators has discovered more than 5,300 new marine life forms.
To put that in context, around 230,000 marine species are known to scientists although estimates of the total number in the world's oceans and seas are between 1.4 million and 1.6 million.
In the 2002-03 year, 1,555 marine species were newly identified, said Dr Dennis Gordon, a principal scientist at New Zealand's national Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research.
Working at that rate, it would take up to 881 years to finish the task of describing the marine species on the planet, Gordon told the conference.
But the principal scientist of the census, Dr Ron O'Dor, a professor of biology at Canada's Dalhousie University, said the census was opening up new areas of research.
"It's as important to know what you don't know as it is to know what you know," he said.
The projects, which include examining life on undersea mountains and under 400 metres (437 yards) of Antarctic ice, are throwing light on previously unknown species and regions.
"The census will provide us an objective robust benchmark by which future change in marine life can be assessed," said Dr Michael Stoddart, chief scientist to Australia's National Antarctic Programme and project leader for the census's Antarctic work.
New technology is allowing researchers to go deeper into the ocean than ever before and to follow large marine animals such as sharks, turtles and seals on their migrations.
A study of 22 Californian sea lions which migrated unusually far out into the Pacific Ocean in recent years due to warmer than normal sea temperatures provides clues to how marine life could respond to climate change.
"By following how these animals respond to the changing oceanography, we will get an idea of how they will respond to a changing habitat in the future," said Daniel Costa a University of California professor and project leader of a census project to tag large Pacific predators.
Tagging of the previously mysterious great white sharks along the Californian coast showed they travelled across the Pacific to Hawaii in spring before returning to the mainland coast in autumn.
Stoddart said climate change is bringing about rapid changes in the Antarctic environment, where 18 expeditions are heading over the southern summer.
"So there is an added impetus and added urgency for us to work in the high latitude southern region," he said.
On the other end of the size scale, even less is known about marine microbes, including bacteria and viruses. Yet they add up to as much as 98 percent of the total biomass of marine life, the conference was told.
To provide some historical context for the census, one study has been looking at how marine life had changed in past centuries.
Researchers have used fossils, archaeological records and historical documents including fishing logs to trace changes in 12 estuary areas, mainly in Europe and North America.
Dr Heike Lotze, also of Dalhousie University, said the project showed about seven percent of species had become extinct globally or locally in the estuary areas and 36 percent had collapsed to less than 10 percent of previous numbers.
"Human exploitation was the most important reason for extinctions, followed by habitat loss and pollution," said Lotze.
But the researchers are also looking to the future, especially as the end of the first census draws near.
They want to ensure that support can be found for funding to ensure there is a second census leading up to 2020 as human and climate threats put mounting pressure on the oceans.
"Can we convey the urgency of continuing our efforts over the next decade?" challenged Rutgers University professor, Dr J. Frederick Grassle, who chairs the census scientific steering committee.
Links
Census of Marine Life website with links to photos and reports of what scientists have discovered about our oceans.
Mediterranean is most perilous place on Earth for sharks: IUCN
Yahoo News 16 Nov 07;
The Mediterranean is "the most dangerous place on Earth for sharks and rays," the World Conservation Union (IUCN) said on Friday, in a report that said 42 percent of these species in this sea were threatened with extinction.
Overfishing, including so-called by-catch -- when species are caught accidentally -- is the main causes of decline, it said.
The report looked at 71 Mediterranean species of sharks, rays and chimaeras, or cartilaginous fishes, which were assessed using the criteria of the IUCN's famous Red List of endangered species.
Thirty species are threatened with extinction, of which 13 are classified at the highest threat level of Critically Endangered.
Eight are classified as Endangered and nine as Vulnerable, another 13 species come into the Near Threatened category, while a lack of information led to 18 species being classified as Data Deficient. Only 10 species are considered to be of Least Concern.
No other region has such a percentage of endangered shark and ray species, the Swiss-based IUCN said.
It highlighted the plight of the Maltese skate (Leucoraja melitensis), which is found only in the Mediterranean, and whose population has plunged 80 percent because of bottom trawling.
The giant devil ray (Mobula mobular) has been decimated by illegal driftnetting. Females of this species can grow to five meters (17 feet) but give birth to only one pup per pregnancy -- a slow reproductive rate that leaves the species vulnerable when its numbers fall rapidly.
Just a single species among those assessed, a deep-sea shark called the Portuguese dogfish (Centroscymnus coelolepis), is doing relatively well.
The fish is found at depths of nearly 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) and thus may be protected by a 2005 ban on fisheries below 1,000 meters (3,250 feet).
Eight species of sharks and rays in the Mediterranean have been listed in international conservation conventions as endangered, but only three of them get any degree of protection.
They are white and basking sharks, which are protected in Croatian and European Union (EU) waters, while Malta and Croatia protect the giant devil ray.
Mediterranean Sharks, Rays Facing Oblivion, Study Says
James Owen, National Geographic News 16 Nov 07;
The great white shark is among 30 species of sharks and rays fast swimming toward oblivion in the Mediterranean Sea, a new report warns.
The newly published World Conservation Union (IUCN) report identifies the waters between Europe and Africa as having the highest percentage of threatened sharks and rays in the world.
Some 42 percent of Mediterranean species are at risk, says the IUCN Red List assessment, performed by the conservation body's Shark Specialist Group.
The group blames the plummeting populations on habitat degradation, sport angling, human disturbance, and overfishing—including fish caught as unintended bycatch. (Related: 8 Million Sharks Killed Accidentally off Africa Yearly [April 17, 2007].)
"Our analyses reveal the Mediterranean Sea as one of the world's most dangerous places on Earth for sharks and rays," Claudine Gibson, IUCN Shark Specialist Group program officer and co-author of the report, said in a statement.
"Bottom-dwelling species appear to be at greatest risk in this region, due mainly to intense fishing of the seabed."
A total of 71 species were assessed. Of the 30 species deemed threatened with extinction, 13 were classified as critically endangered, 8 as endangered, and 9 as vulnerable.
Only ten species (14 percent) were considered free of any extinction risk.
Almost Gone
Critically endangered species include the seabed-hugging Maltese skate (Leucoraja melitensis), which lives only in the Mediterranean. Bottom-trawl fishing is the main cause of recent population declines of 80 percent, the IUCN report says.
The shortfin mako shark (Isurus oxyrinchus) and porbeagle shark (Lamna nasus), both prized for their meat and fins, were likewise found to be critically endangered.
"We are particularly concerned about the porbeagle and mako sharks," said shark expert Alen Soldo of the University of Split, Croatia, who participated in the study. "Our studies reveal persistent fishing pressure well in excess of the reproductive capacity of the species."
Endangered species include the giant devil ray (Mobula mobular), which is confined mainly to the Mediterranean.
Its large size and low reproduction rate—females can grow to 17 feet (5 meters) and give birth to only one pup per pregnancy—make the ray especially vulnerable to fishing pressure, the new report warns.
Great White Threat
The great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) was also assessed as endangered in the Mediterranean, an increased threat category than its current global conservation status of vulnerable.
The study found evidence of a 50 to 60 percent drop in great white numbers in the Mediterranean region.
Overfishing and declines in important prey species such as bluefin tuna have likely contributed to the population collapse, the report says. Habitat degradation due to tourism and development in coastal areas overlapping the shark's habitat are also highlighted in the report.
The IUCN decision to raise the great white's conservation status "is absolutely the correct one," said Richard Pierce, director of the Shark Trust, a marine conservation nonprofit based in Plymouth, England.
Pierce was part of a team that in 2005 spent three months searching for great white sharks in the Adriatic Sea, a former Mediterranean stronghold of the species.
"We chummed [put out shark bait] around the clock at all depths, but we didn't see a sign of a great white," Pierce said. "In fact, we saw very little evidence of sharks in general. It was both terrifying and depressing."
While great white sightings were fairly regular in the Mediterranean during the second half of the last century, "they've have all but ceased completely in the last few years," he added.
Saving the Sharks
The key to conserving remaining shark populations is sustainable fisheries management—something Mediterranean countries have historically struggled to implement, Pierce added.
There are currently no catch limits for commercially fished shark and ray species in the sea, the IUCN Shark Specialist Group says. In addition, only a few species receive any protection as a result of conservation agreements.
A recent deepwater fishing ban below 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) and prohibitions on driftnets and shark finning—slicing off a shark's valuable fins and dumping the body at sea—should help conservation efforts, the group says.
But better enforcement measures are needed if threatened populations are to have the chance to recover, IUCN adds.
Links
Mediterranean Sea: most dangerous place on Earth for sharks and rays on the IUCN website with links to the report (PDF file).
The Mediterranean is "the most dangerous place on Earth for sharks and rays," the World Conservation Union (IUCN) said on Friday, in a report that said 42 percent of these species in this sea were threatened with extinction.
Overfishing, including so-called by-catch -- when species are caught accidentally -- is the main causes of decline, it said.
The report looked at 71 Mediterranean species of sharks, rays and chimaeras, or cartilaginous fishes, which were assessed using the criteria of the IUCN's famous Red List of endangered species.
Thirty species are threatened with extinction, of which 13 are classified at the highest threat level of Critically Endangered.
Eight are classified as Endangered and nine as Vulnerable, another 13 species come into the Near Threatened category, while a lack of information led to 18 species being classified as Data Deficient. Only 10 species are considered to be of Least Concern.
No other region has such a percentage of endangered shark and ray species, the Swiss-based IUCN said.
It highlighted the plight of the Maltese skate (Leucoraja melitensis), which is found only in the Mediterranean, and whose population has plunged 80 percent because of bottom trawling.
The giant devil ray (Mobula mobular) has been decimated by illegal driftnetting. Females of this species can grow to five meters (17 feet) but give birth to only one pup per pregnancy -- a slow reproductive rate that leaves the species vulnerable when its numbers fall rapidly.
Just a single species among those assessed, a deep-sea shark called the Portuguese dogfish (Centroscymnus coelolepis), is doing relatively well.
The fish is found at depths of nearly 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) and thus may be protected by a 2005 ban on fisheries below 1,000 meters (3,250 feet).
Eight species of sharks and rays in the Mediterranean have been listed in international conservation conventions as endangered, but only three of them get any degree of protection.
They are white and basking sharks, which are protected in Croatian and European Union (EU) waters, while Malta and Croatia protect the giant devil ray.
Mediterranean Sharks, Rays Facing Oblivion, Study Says
James Owen, National Geographic News 16 Nov 07;
The great white shark is among 30 species of sharks and rays fast swimming toward oblivion in the Mediterranean Sea, a new report warns.
The newly published World Conservation Union (IUCN) report identifies the waters between Europe and Africa as having the highest percentage of threatened sharks and rays in the world.
Some 42 percent of Mediterranean species are at risk, says the IUCN Red List assessment, performed by the conservation body's Shark Specialist Group.
The group blames the plummeting populations on habitat degradation, sport angling, human disturbance, and overfishing—including fish caught as unintended bycatch. (Related: 8 Million Sharks Killed Accidentally off Africa Yearly [April 17, 2007].)
"Our analyses reveal the Mediterranean Sea as one of the world's most dangerous places on Earth for sharks and rays," Claudine Gibson, IUCN Shark Specialist Group program officer and co-author of the report, said in a statement.
"Bottom-dwelling species appear to be at greatest risk in this region, due mainly to intense fishing of the seabed."
A total of 71 species were assessed. Of the 30 species deemed threatened with extinction, 13 were classified as critically endangered, 8 as endangered, and 9 as vulnerable.
Only ten species (14 percent) were considered free of any extinction risk.
Almost Gone
Critically endangered species include the seabed-hugging Maltese skate (Leucoraja melitensis), which lives only in the Mediterranean. Bottom-trawl fishing is the main cause of recent population declines of 80 percent, the IUCN report says.
The shortfin mako shark (Isurus oxyrinchus) and porbeagle shark (Lamna nasus), both prized for their meat and fins, were likewise found to be critically endangered.
"We are particularly concerned about the porbeagle and mako sharks," said shark expert Alen Soldo of the University of Split, Croatia, who participated in the study. "Our studies reveal persistent fishing pressure well in excess of the reproductive capacity of the species."
Endangered species include the giant devil ray (Mobula mobular), which is confined mainly to the Mediterranean.
Its large size and low reproduction rate—females can grow to 17 feet (5 meters) and give birth to only one pup per pregnancy—make the ray especially vulnerable to fishing pressure, the new report warns.
Great White Threat
The great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) was also assessed as endangered in the Mediterranean, an increased threat category than its current global conservation status of vulnerable.
The study found evidence of a 50 to 60 percent drop in great white numbers in the Mediterranean region.
Overfishing and declines in important prey species such as bluefin tuna have likely contributed to the population collapse, the report says. Habitat degradation due to tourism and development in coastal areas overlapping the shark's habitat are also highlighted in the report.
The IUCN decision to raise the great white's conservation status "is absolutely the correct one," said Richard Pierce, director of the Shark Trust, a marine conservation nonprofit based in Plymouth, England.
Pierce was part of a team that in 2005 spent three months searching for great white sharks in the Adriatic Sea, a former Mediterranean stronghold of the species.
"We chummed [put out shark bait] around the clock at all depths, but we didn't see a sign of a great white," Pierce said. "In fact, we saw very little evidence of sharks in general. It was both terrifying and depressing."
While great white sightings were fairly regular in the Mediterranean during the second half of the last century, "they've have all but ceased completely in the last few years," he added.
Saving the Sharks
The key to conserving remaining shark populations is sustainable fisheries management—something Mediterranean countries have historically struggled to implement, Pierce added.
There are currently no catch limits for commercially fished shark and ray species in the sea, the IUCN Shark Specialist Group says. In addition, only a few species receive any protection as a result of conservation agreements.
A recent deepwater fishing ban below 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) and prohibitions on driftnets and shark finning—slicing off a shark's valuable fins and dumping the body at sea—should help conservation efforts, the group says.
But better enforcement measures are needed if threatened populations are to have the chance to recover, IUCN adds.
Links
Mediterranean Sea: most dangerous place on Earth for sharks and rays on the IUCN website with links to the report (PDF file).
Best of our wild blogs: 16 Nov 07
A Damming Letter
which I must say is dam amusing on the lost in the jungle blog
Marvelous Pitchers
amazing variety in a secret forest on the justin dive blog
Are you wild enough for the environment?
Enough with all the “Please recycle” or “Please cut down plastic bags”. Those are the basics, for amateurs. Want to know how professionals do their jobs in environmental conservation? An interview with Dr Reza Azmi founder of Wild Asia on the wildasia blog
Sweet Potato
How to grow the plant on the garden voices blog
which I must say is dam amusing on the lost in the jungle blog
Marvelous Pitchers
amazing variety in a secret forest on the justin dive blog
Are you wild enough for the environment?
Enough with all the “Please recycle” or “Please cut down plastic bags”. Those are the basics, for amateurs. Want to know how professionals do their jobs in environmental conservation? An interview with Dr Reza Azmi founder of Wild Asia on the wildasia blog
Sweet Potato
How to grow the plant on the garden voices blog
Haze? PSI hits 83 due to poor dispersion of air pollutants
Channel NewsAsia 16 Nov 07
SINGAPORE: The Pollutant Standards Index (PSI) hit 83 – within the moderate range – at 4pm on Thursday.
Residents from Bukit Panjang, Ang Mo Kio and Bishan called the Channel NewsAsia hotline to say that the sky was hazy.
The National Environment Agency (NEA) said it was due to the poor dispersion of air pollutants.
The pollutants accumulate because of light wind conditions during the current Inter-Monsoon period.
NEA added that the haze should clear when the wind conditions improve.
It said it is not uncommon for Singapore to experience brief periods of reduced visibility from time to time during the Inter-Monsoon period.
With the PSI at 83, no special precaution is needed, but those with respiratory ailments should consult their doctors before undertaking vigorous exercises.- CNA/so
Are hazy days here again?
Straits Times 16 Nov 07
Singapore experienced hazy conditions yesterday, with air quality hitting the moderate range at 83 on the Pollutant Standards Index - the worst since October last year.
The haziness was a result of light wind conditions during the inter-monsoon period, which led to the poor dispersion of air pollutants.
The situation is expected to clear once wind conditions improve.
PSI drops to good range
Channel NewsAsia 16 Nov 07
SINGAPORE: The Pollutant Standards Index (PSI) was in the good range at 43 at 4pm on Friday.
The PSI had hit 83 on Thursday.
The National Environment Agency said the winds are likely to remain light with brief periods of reduced visibility over the weekend.
During the current inter-monsoon period, brief periods of moderate air quality is expected.
This is due to poor dispersion of air pollutants in the air as a result of light wind conditions.
The inter-monsoon is expected to last until the end of November.
- CNA/yb
Links
Air pollution hits the news on the leafmonkey blog
SINGAPORE: The Pollutant Standards Index (PSI) hit 83 – within the moderate range – at 4pm on Thursday.
Residents from Bukit Panjang, Ang Mo Kio and Bishan called the Channel NewsAsia hotline to say that the sky was hazy.
The National Environment Agency (NEA) said it was due to the poor dispersion of air pollutants.
The pollutants accumulate because of light wind conditions during the current Inter-Monsoon period.
NEA added that the haze should clear when the wind conditions improve.
It said it is not uncommon for Singapore to experience brief periods of reduced visibility from time to time during the Inter-Monsoon period.
With the PSI at 83, no special precaution is needed, but those with respiratory ailments should consult their doctors before undertaking vigorous exercises.- CNA/so
Are hazy days here again?
Straits Times 16 Nov 07
Singapore experienced hazy conditions yesterday, with air quality hitting the moderate range at 83 on the Pollutant Standards Index - the worst since October last year.
The haziness was a result of light wind conditions during the inter-monsoon period, which led to the poor dispersion of air pollutants.
The situation is expected to clear once wind conditions improve.
PSI drops to good range
Channel NewsAsia 16 Nov 07
SINGAPORE: The Pollutant Standards Index (PSI) was in the good range at 43 at 4pm on Friday.
The PSI had hit 83 on Thursday.
The National Environment Agency said the winds are likely to remain light with brief periods of reduced visibility over the weekend.
During the current inter-monsoon period, brief periods of moderate air quality is expected.
This is due to poor dispersion of air pollutants in the air as a result of light wind conditions.
The inter-monsoon is expected to last until the end of November.
- CNA/yb
Links
Air pollution hits the news on the leafmonkey blog
Proposal to green grey granite stockpile
Straits Times Forum 16 Nov 07;
Letter from Dr Geh Min, President Nature Society (Singapore)
THE Building and Construction Authority's granite stockpile located in Lim Chu Kang is well under way. Covering about 80ha of undulating scrubland, it has reduced a large chunk of earmarked farmland to sterility. It has also reduced considerably the habitat for open-country wildlife.
The area had been promoted recently by the Kranji Countryside Association and the Singapore Tourism Board as an agri-tainment hub. Rules had been relaxed by the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority to allow for restaurants, farm-stays, workshops, etc.
Thus the presence of the massive pile of grey concrete is certainly in conflict with this initiative.
The boundary of the stockpile even reaches the very verge of charming Neo Tiew Road, the main transport artery in the area for visitors. This is indeed deplorable. A towering opaque fence detracts greatly from the pleasant and natural greenery.
Apart from the heat effect, granite dust blown by the wind causes air pollution. Vegetation nearby is coated with dust and orchids are dying in an adjacent farm. It is most unfortunate that no substantial buffer was provided between the stockpile and the contiguous roads and farms.
Something could and should be done to alleviate this ugly situation. The stockpile is a national reserve - to be used only in times of critical shortage. We propose that a layer of earth be dumped onto the surface of the pile to cover the rocks. The hollowing out of the ground now being undertaken should provide sufficient earth for such a purpose.
The whole pile should be landscaped into an undulating terrain and lawn grass grown over it as an interim measure to prevent erosion. After this, wild grass and shrubs should be allowed to colonise it to give a natural look to the stockpile.
Trees will find it difficult to colonise, but they can be planted along the boundary to provide a natural screen.
When the area becomes fully green, the opaque fence should be dismantled. The area could then be used for recreational activities that are in harmony with the tranquillity of the countryside.
The result will not recover the original landscape and habitat with all its charms and wildlife, but at least it will not be an eyesore and, hopefully, it is something that the farmers can live with.
Related articles
Farmers at Kranji and granite stockpile there
various media articles, on the wildsingapore website
Letter from Dr Geh Min, President Nature Society (Singapore)
THE Building and Construction Authority's granite stockpile located in Lim Chu Kang is well under way. Covering about 80ha of undulating scrubland, it has reduced a large chunk of earmarked farmland to sterility. It has also reduced considerably the habitat for open-country wildlife.
The area had been promoted recently by the Kranji Countryside Association and the Singapore Tourism Board as an agri-tainment hub. Rules had been relaxed by the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority to allow for restaurants, farm-stays, workshops, etc.
Thus the presence of the massive pile of grey concrete is certainly in conflict with this initiative.
The boundary of the stockpile even reaches the very verge of charming Neo Tiew Road, the main transport artery in the area for visitors. This is indeed deplorable. A towering opaque fence detracts greatly from the pleasant and natural greenery.
Apart from the heat effect, granite dust blown by the wind causes air pollution. Vegetation nearby is coated with dust and orchids are dying in an adjacent farm. It is most unfortunate that no substantial buffer was provided between the stockpile and the contiguous roads and farms.
Something could and should be done to alleviate this ugly situation. The stockpile is a national reserve - to be used only in times of critical shortage. We propose that a layer of earth be dumped onto the surface of the pile to cover the rocks. The hollowing out of the ground now being undertaken should provide sufficient earth for such a purpose.
The whole pile should be landscaped into an undulating terrain and lawn grass grown over it as an interim measure to prevent erosion. After this, wild grass and shrubs should be allowed to colonise it to give a natural look to the stockpile.
Trees will find it difficult to colonise, but they can be planted along the boundary to provide a natural screen.
When the area becomes fully green, the opaque fence should be dismantled. The area could then be used for recreational activities that are in harmony with the tranquillity of the countryside.
The result will not recover the original landscape and habitat with all its charms and wildlife, but at least it will not be an eyesore and, hopefully, it is something that the farmers can live with.
Related articles
Farmers at Kranji and granite stockpile there
various media articles, on the wildsingapore website
SLA receives 35 bids for agricultural sites in Sungei Tengah
Channel NewsAsia 15 Nov 07
SINGAPORE: The Singapore Land Authority (SLA) has received 35 bids for four agricultural sites in Sungei Tengah, which were put up for tender in October.
The bids range between S$101,000 and S$1.12 million.
The four sites span 96,000 square metres, or the size of about 11 football fields, and they attracted top bids totalling some S$3.58 million.
SLA said Environmental Landscape is the top bidder for two of the largest sites.
The company's submission was S$1.12 million for the biggest land parcel (31,500 square metres) and S$963,360 for a smaller one (25,564 square metres).
Dragonwana Aquarium Trading submitted the highest bid for the third largest plot (19,634 square metres) at S$530,000, while public-listed Qian Hu Corporation put in S$967,135 for the smallest site (19,342 square metres).
At the close, the sites received 35 bids from 26 tenderers, comprising 21 companies and five individuals.
SLA said the results of the tender will be announced in a few days.- CNA/so
Related articles
Farmers at Kranji and granite stockpile there
various media articles, on the wildsingapore website
SINGAPORE: The Singapore Land Authority (SLA) has received 35 bids for four agricultural sites in Sungei Tengah, which were put up for tender in October.
The bids range between S$101,000 and S$1.12 million.
The four sites span 96,000 square metres, or the size of about 11 football fields, and they attracted top bids totalling some S$3.58 million.
SLA said Environmental Landscape is the top bidder for two of the largest sites.
The company's submission was S$1.12 million for the biggest land parcel (31,500 square metres) and S$963,360 for a smaller one (25,564 square metres).
Dragonwana Aquarium Trading submitted the highest bid for the third largest plot (19,634 square metres) at S$530,000, while public-listed Qian Hu Corporation put in S$967,135 for the smallest site (19,342 square metres).
At the close, the sites received 35 bids from 26 tenderers, comprising 21 companies and five individuals.
SLA said the results of the tender will be announced in a few days.- CNA/so
Related articles
- SLA tendering out four sites at Sungei Tengah for agricultural use
Channel NewsAsia 11 Oct 07
various media articles, on the wildsingapore website
Young Singapore newshounds: Their green video is picked for World Contest
The Electric New Paper 16 Nov 07;
THESE young newshounds have just bagged the Top News Production Award at this year's Kids Witness News video documentary competition.
The report on rooftop gardens in Singapore was produced by 15-year-olds Eileen Chong, Vathsala Muthu, Sathialingam Thanabalan and Darren Ng from Jurong Secondary School.
Titled The Gardens of Eden, the documentary will represent Singapore at the regional and global levels of the competition. They were one of the few teams nominated for all the seven categories this year. They also bagged The Tune Award for their sound effects.
The environmentally conscious students picked rooftop gardens as their subject because it is new to Singapore and linked to global warming.
Eileen, the documentary's presenter, is no stranger to the limelight. She had interviewed PM Lee Hsien Loong when he visited her school earlier this year.
The interview and his visit to the school made such a good impression that PM Lee referred to it in his National Day Rally speech on how schools carve their niche by teaching less and learning more.
Film-maker Lionel Chok, 34, one of the five judges, said: 'It was impactful, well-researched. Rooftop gardens are very HDB, very Singaporean. It talks about what Singapore is doing about global warming.'
For Eileen, last week's award was even more special.
'Last year, I had won The Journalist of Tomorrow Award for presenting.
'This year I got to share it with my team, who are also my friends, and this makes me very happy.'
Megha Gupta, newsroom intern
Other winners
1. The Spotlight Award for Best Education Content
Pei Hwa Secondary School with 'The green journey without end'
2. The Clipper Award for Best Editing
Regent Secondary School with 'Are mozzies dominating?'
3. The Journalist of Tomorrow Award for Best Presenter
Michelle Tan from Compassvale Secondary School
4. The Young Film Maker Award for most promise as a filmmaker
Tan Ming Jie from Anderson Primary School
5. Best Facilitator Award for leadership and motivation to students
Mr Eugene Beh from Bedok North Secondary School
THESE young newshounds have just bagged the Top News Production Award at this year's Kids Witness News video documentary competition.
The report on rooftop gardens in Singapore was produced by 15-year-olds Eileen Chong, Vathsala Muthu, Sathialingam Thanabalan and Darren Ng from Jurong Secondary School.
Titled The Gardens of Eden, the documentary will represent Singapore at the regional and global levels of the competition. They were one of the few teams nominated for all the seven categories this year. They also bagged The Tune Award for their sound effects.
The environmentally conscious students picked rooftop gardens as their subject because it is new to Singapore and linked to global warming.
Eileen, the documentary's presenter, is no stranger to the limelight. She had interviewed PM Lee Hsien Loong when he visited her school earlier this year.
The interview and his visit to the school made such a good impression that PM Lee referred to it in his National Day Rally speech on how schools carve their niche by teaching less and learning more.
Film-maker Lionel Chok, 34, one of the five judges, said: 'It was impactful, well-researched. Rooftop gardens are very HDB, very Singaporean. It talks about what Singapore is doing about global warming.'
For Eileen, last week's award was even more special.
'Last year, I had won The Journalist of Tomorrow Award for presenting.
'This year I got to share it with my team, who are also my friends, and this makes me very happy.'
Megha Gupta, newsroom intern
Other winners
1. The Spotlight Award for Best Education Content
Pei Hwa Secondary School with 'The green journey without end'
2. The Clipper Award for Best Editing
Regent Secondary School with 'Are mozzies dominating?'
3. The Journalist of Tomorrow Award for Best Presenter
Michelle Tan from Compassvale Secondary School
4. The Young Film Maker Award for most promise as a filmmaker
Tan Ming Jie from Anderson Primary School
5. Best Facilitator Award for leadership and motivation to students
Mr Eugene Beh from Bedok North Secondary School
Asia's dying species threaten man's future
Nirmal Ghosh, Straits Times 16 Nov 07
BANGKOK - ON HIS walks in the Himalayas and the hills of south India, wildlife scientist A.J.T. Johnsingh has noted that quietly, the golden mahseer population is dwindling.
This is no ordinary fish. At the top of the food chain, the golden mahseer is the tiger of the fish species in the mountain streams it inhabits.
But in recent years, its numbers have declined steeply, because of net and dynamite fishing, and the damming and polluting of the rivers it depends on.
Above the mahseer, and often in exactly the same habitat in India and Nepal, is another species which this year was suddenly found to be highly endangered - the gharial, or fish-eating crocodile.
Gharials compete directly with people for fish in the rivers they inhabit and, inevitably, lose. There are now only an estimated 200 breeding adults left in the wild.
Like the golden mahseer and gharial, dozens of species are dying across Asia, often unacknowledged because they are not cute, cuddly or charismatic.
Some, like the Sumatran rhino, may well be functionally extinct in the wild - meaning their populations are so low and so widely scattered that individuals no longer come across others of breeding age. The twilight of a species is usually slow, and as the final darkness falls, also very lonely.
Current documented rates of extinction of species are estimated to be roughly 100 times higher than typical rates in the fossil record, notes the United Nations Environment Programme's fourth Global Environmental Outlook (GEO4) report, just released.
Separately, the World Conservation Union (IUCN) in September released its annual updated Red List of endangered species.
The list is based on information from thousands of scientists in 147 countries who looked at available data on 41,000 species.
They concluded that more than 16,000 are in danger of becoming extinct - 188 more than listed last year.
Extinction is a part of evolution, but studies clearly show human activity is accelerating the process.
The figures are based on what we know. We are certainly losing species without ever knowing they existed somewhere in the food chain of which we are a part.
The GEO4 report identifies loss of biodiversity as a critical environmental challenge if we are to survive as a species ourselves.
The reason is every species lost is a brick yanked out of a wall. Sometimes, one brick dislodges others. The 'infrastructure' of life is affected, and mankind's food and medicine base narrows.
Asia is a critical frontline in this battle - which the GEO4 authors say has yet to be seriously joined in terms either of policy or its implementation.
Subsequent to the GEO4 report, Hong Kong's Ocean Park Conservation Foundation released findings of research which showed 79 species of freshwater turtles - a full 80 per cent of the turtle family in Asia - are endangered.
And at last month's meeting of the IUCN's Primate Specialist Group, Asia appeared as home - or what is left of it - to more endangered primates than any other continent.
Asia has 11 endangered primates, including the Sumatran orang utan, Siau Island tarsier and Hainan black-crested gibbon.
Vietnam alone has four of the 25 most endangered species worldwide. They include some of the most beautiful life forms on the planet, like the golden-headed langur - down from thousands of animals some two human generations ago to only 65 today.
In field research, Mr Ben Rawson - a primatologist with Conservation International in Hanoi - and his colleagues often find that populations thought to be doing fine are actually in dire straits.
There are small candles of hope - like the recent discovery of a population of the highly endangered primate, the grey-shanked douc.
But, generally speaking, 'the more we find out, the worse the situation seems to be', Mr Rawson says.
Sometimes, large patches of forest have no primates left because they have been hunted out; other times, small patches of forest have remnant populations with nowhere to go.
The drivers of this rapid and widespread loss of biodiversity, with entire species in the air, on land, in freshwater and in our seas and oceans dwindling and disappearing, are a complex mix which triggers a domino effect.
They include land use change from forest and open grassland and wetland to agriculture, industry and towns; the replacement of natural forest with low-diversity plantations; changing the geography and hydrology of river systems with dams and reservoirs; and simply direct exploitation of natural resources for food and commercial trade with little real accountability.
Says Dr Johnsingh, currently scientific adviser to the Worldwide Fund for Nature in India: 'When the population of a species goes below a certain level it (extinction) can happen very quickly.'
The answer is not just to legislate more protected areas - which especially in terms of the marine environment is grossly inadequate at less than 1 per cent of total marine area globally.
In the Vietnam example, which is by no means unique in Asia, protected areas remain underfunded and understaffed, and not highly effective at protecting biodiversity, says Mr Rawson.
Biodiversity is undervalued at the policy level, the GEO4 authors argue. 'The values of biodiversity are insufficiently recognised by political and market systems,' says the report.
'Losses of biodiversity, such as the erosion of genetic variability in a population, are often slow or gradual, and are often not seen or fully recognised until it is too late.'
BANGKOK - ON HIS walks in the Himalayas and the hills of south India, wildlife scientist A.J.T. Johnsingh has noted that quietly, the golden mahseer population is dwindling.
This is no ordinary fish. At the top of the food chain, the golden mahseer is the tiger of the fish species in the mountain streams it inhabits.
But in recent years, its numbers have declined steeply, because of net and dynamite fishing, and the damming and polluting of the rivers it depends on.
Above the mahseer, and often in exactly the same habitat in India and Nepal, is another species which this year was suddenly found to be highly endangered - the gharial, or fish-eating crocodile.
Gharials compete directly with people for fish in the rivers they inhabit and, inevitably, lose. There are now only an estimated 200 breeding adults left in the wild.
Like the golden mahseer and gharial, dozens of species are dying across Asia, often unacknowledged because they are not cute, cuddly or charismatic.
Some, like the Sumatran rhino, may well be functionally extinct in the wild - meaning their populations are so low and so widely scattered that individuals no longer come across others of breeding age. The twilight of a species is usually slow, and as the final darkness falls, also very lonely.
Current documented rates of extinction of species are estimated to be roughly 100 times higher than typical rates in the fossil record, notes the United Nations Environment Programme's fourth Global Environmental Outlook (GEO4) report, just released.
Separately, the World Conservation Union (IUCN) in September released its annual updated Red List of endangered species.
The list is based on information from thousands of scientists in 147 countries who looked at available data on 41,000 species.
They concluded that more than 16,000 are in danger of becoming extinct - 188 more than listed last year.
Extinction is a part of evolution, but studies clearly show human activity is accelerating the process.
The figures are based on what we know. We are certainly losing species without ever knowing they existed somewhere in the food chain of which we are a part.
The GEO4 report identifies loss of biodiversity as a critical environmental challenge if we are to survive as a species ourselves.
The reason is every species lost is a brick yanked out of a wall. Sometimes, one brick dislodges others. The 'infrastructure' of life is affected, and mankind's food and medicine base narrows.
Asia is a critical frontline in this battle - which the GEO4 authors say has yet to be seriously joined in terms either of policy or its implementation.
Subsequent to the GEO4 report, Hong Kong's Ocean Park Conservation Foundation released findings of research which showed 79 species of freshwater turtles - a full 80 per cent of the turtle family in Asia - are endangered.
And at last month's meeting of the IUCN's Primate Specialist Group, Asia appeared as home - or what is left of it - to more endangered primates than any other continent.
Asia has 11 endangered primates, including the Sumatran orang utan, Siau Island tarsier and Hainan black-crested gibbon.
Vietnam alone has four of the 25 most endangered species worldwide. They include some of the most beautiful life forms on the planet, like the golden-headed langur - down from thousands of animals some two human generations ago to only 65 today.
In field research, Mr Ben Rawson - a primatologist with Conservation International in Hanoi - and his colleagues often find that populations thought to be doing fine are actually in dire straits.
There are small candles of hope - like the recent discovery of a population of the highly endangered primate, the grey-shanked douc.
But, generally speaking, 'the more we find out, the worse the situation seems to be', Mr Rawson says.
Sometimes, large patches of forest have no primates left because they have been hunted out; other times, small patches of forest have remnant populations with nowhere to go.
The drivers of this rapid and widespread loss of biodiversity, with entire species in the air, on land, in freshwater and in our seas and oceans dwindling and disappearing, are a complex mix which triggers a domino effect.
They include land use change from forest and open grassland and wetland to agriculture, industry and towns; the replacement of natural forest with low-diversity plantations; changing the geography and hydrology of river systems with dams and reservoirs; and simply direct exploitation of natural resources for food and commercial trade with little real accountability.
Says Dr Johnsingh, currently scientific adviser to the Worldwide Fund for Nature in India: 'When the population of a species goes below a certain level it (extinction) can happen very quickly.'
The answer is not just to legislate more protected areas - which especially in terms of the marine environment is grossly inadequate at less than 1 per cent of total marine area globally.
In the Vietnam example, which is by no means unique in Asia, protected areas remain underfunded and understaffed, and not highly effective at protecting biodiversity, says Mr Rawson.
Biodiversity is undervalued at the policy level, the GEO4 authors argue. 'The values of biodiversity are insufficiently recognised by political and market systems,' says the report.
'Losses of biodiversity, such as the erosion of genetic variability in a population, are often slow or gradual, and are often not seen or fully recognised until it is too late.'
Singapore firm seeks to set up carbon trading facility
Jessica Cheam, Straits Times 16 Nov 07;
Asia Carbon says it is in talks with SGX to allow trading of carbon credits on the spot
A LOCAL firm is working with the Singapore Exchange (SGX) to launch a potentially lucrative carbon credit trading facility.
Asia Carbon Group has said it is in 'close talks' with the SGX over the plan. A deal will propel Singapore to the forefront of carbon trading in the region, Asia Carbon's group director, Mr Yuvaraj Dinesh Babu, told The Straits Times.
When contacted, Mr Benjamin Foo, head of the SGX's clearing and commodities business, told The Straits Times carbon trading was an 'important area', given higher awareness of environment issues.
'We are studying the market for carbon trading in Asia and are talking to the industry,' he said.
Singapore has set its sights on becoming a regional carbon trading hub ever since the Republic ratified the Kyoto Protocol in March last year.
Both IE Singapore and the Economic Development Board have backed the plan.
The Kyoto treaty is a global agreement among industrialised nations to meet greenhouse gas emission targets. It included a scheme - the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) - that created a market for carbon credits when it came into effect in 2005.
Carbon trading, also known as emissions trading, is the buying and selling of these credits. Most scientists have largely blamed greenhouse gas emissions for global climate change.
The global carbon market trebled in size to US$30 billion (S$43.4 billion) between 2005 and last year, so it was not surprising that Singapore wanted a piece of this growing multibillion-dollar pie. The International Emissions Trading Association said the market could be worth US$60 billion this year.
Currently, 80 per cent of carbon credits are traded bilaterally - directly between sellers, usually from Asian countries, and buyers in Europe and Japan. Twenty per cent of these, however, are traded on about 10 carbon exchanges worldwide.
Asia Carbon's ACX-Change electronic platform, launched in 2003 to hold auctions of carbon credits, is one of them. Asia Carbon now wants to take carbon trading a step further by introducing spot trading on the SGX, said Mr Dinesh.
Spot trading means carbon credits can be traded on the spot.
'We believe the SGX has the clearing and settlement infrastructure for such trading and, eventually, we want Singapore to be the consolidated trading centre for all buyers and sellers in the region,' said Mr Dinesh.
He spoke at a climate change conference on the third day of the Global Entrepolis @ Singapore on Wednesday.
Founded in 2003, Asia Carbon has developed about 100 projects in Asia that will generate about 23 million carbon credits until 2012. These credits will be worth about 276 million euros (S$584.5 million) upon delivery.
Asia Carbon's next step is to create different carbon financial instruments, such as futures and options, for the carbon market, Mr Dinesh said.
'Some companies are withholding their credits to sell in the future, so there's a need for us to address this,' he said.
At the same conference, World Bank senior adviser Clive Mason said the carbon market was 'likely to stay post-2012'. The Kyoto Protocol expires that year.
Recently, concerns have emerged of a slowdown in the carbon market. London-listed carbon credit developer EcoSecurities has lowered its carbon credit portfolio projections, causing its share price to slump 47 per cent last Tuesday.
This is not surprising, according to Mr Mason, as it becomes less viable for CDM projects to be registered coming up to 2012. Registration takes 18 months.
Asia Carbon says it is in talks with SGX to allow trading of carbon credits on the spot
A LOCAL firm is working with the Singapore Exchange (SGX) to launch a potentially lucrative carbon credit trading facility.
Asia Carbon Group has said it is in 'close talks' with the SGX over the plan. A deal will propel Singapore to the forefront of carbon trading in the region, Asia Carbon's group director, Mr Yuvaraj Dinesh Babu, told The Straits Times.
When contacted, Mr Benjamin Foo, head of the SGX's clearing and commodities business, told The Straits Times carbon trading was an 'important area', given higher awareness of environment issues.
'We are studying the market for carbon trading in Asia and are talking to the industry,' he said.
Singapore has set its sights on becoming a regional carbon trading hub ever since the Republic ratified the Kyoto Protocol in March last year.
Both IE Singapore and the Economic Development Board have backed the plan.
The Kyoto treaty is a global agreement among industrialised nations to meet greenhouse gas emission targets. It included a scheme - the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) - that created a market for carbon credits when it came into effect in 2005.
Carbon trading, also known as emissions trading, is the buying and selling of these credits. Most scientists have largely blamed greenhouse gas emissions for global climate change.
The global carbon market trebled in size to US$30 billion (S$43.4 billion) between 2005 and last year, so it was not surprising that Singapore wanted a piece of this growing multibillion-dollar pie. The International Emissions Trading Association said the market could be worth US$60 billion this year.
Currently, 80 per cent of carbon credits are traded bilaterally - directly between sellers, usually from Asian countries, and buyers in Europe and Japan. Twenty per cent of these, however, are traded on about 10 carbon exchanges worldwide.
Asia Carbon's ACX-Change electronic platform, launched in 2003 to hold auctions of carbon credits, is one of them. Asia Carbon now wants to take carbon trading a step further by introducing spot trading on the SGX, said Mr Dinesh.
Spot trading means carbon credits can be traded on the spot.
'We believe the SGX has the clearing and settlement infrastructure for such trading and, eventually, we want Singapore to be the consolidated trading centre for all buyers and sellers in the region,' said Mr Dinesh.
He spoke at a climate change conference on the third day of the Global Entrepolis @ Singapore on Wednesday.
Founded in 2003, Asia Carbon has developed about 100 projects in Asia that will generate about 23 million carbon credits until 2012. These credits will be worth about 276 million euros (S$584.5 million) upon delivery.
Asia Carbon's next step is to create different carbon financial instruments, such as futures and options, for the carbon market, Mr Dinesh said.
'Some companies are withholding their credits to sell in the future, so there's a need for us to address this,' he said.
At the same conference, World Bank senior adviser Clive Mason said the carbon market was 'likely to stay post-2012'. The Kyoto Protocol expires that year.
Recently, concerns have emerged of a slowdown in the carbon market. London-listed carbon credit developer EcoSecurities has lowered its carbon credit portfolio projections, causing its share price to slump 47 per cent last Tuesday.
This is not surprising, according to Mr Mason, as it becomes less viable for CDM projects to be registered coming up to 2012. Registration takes 18 months.
Illegal logging still a problem for Indonesia
Business Times 16 nov 07
(JAKARTA) Indonesia may take at least seven years to halt illegal logging and deforestation in the world's third-largest tropical rainforests, according to the minister responsible for the trees.
Malam Sambat Kaban, minister of forestry, is seeking additional powers to catch and prosecute illegal loggers and may grant more rights to indigenous tribes.
The government also plans to prod companies to replant trees by enforcing the terms of existing plantations licences, he said.
'We are committed, we have a replanting programme and we are proposing a law,' Mr Kaban said in an interview here. 'We hope by 2014 the natural forest will not be disturbed.'
The seven-year target may be too slow for environmental groups and neighbouring countries Singapore and Malaysia, whose air has been made hazy by forest burn-offs in the South-east Asian archipelago.
Indonesia has granted logging rights over some 58 million hectares of rainforest, an area bigger than France, and is trying to preserve a similar-sized tract.
'I think the 2014 expectation is impossible,' said Rully Syumanda, a member of the Jakarta-based Indonesian Forum for Environment.
'Companies are not fulfilling their promises and there's corruption in the police and other authorities.' - Bloomberg
Follow the money trail in illegal logging crimes: Indonesian activists
Nabiha Shahab, Yahoo News 16 Nov 07
Indonesian activists are urging authorities here to hunt down illegal loggers using anti money-laundering laws, following the shock acquittal of a high-profile suspect who has gone on the run.
Indonesia's abysmal record on fighting illegal logging -- no timber baron has ever received a substantial jail term here -- is under the spotlight ahead of the nation hosting a global climate change conference in December.
Adelin Lis, the head of logging company Keang Nam Development, fled from custody earlier this month after a court in North Sumatra found he was not guilty of illegal logging charges due to a lack of evidence.
Lis' company was cleared of accusations that it illegally razed prime forest in lush North Sumatra province, where some of Indonesia's last remaining rainforest tracts provide refuge to elephants and endangered tigers.
The logger had originally been nabbed when he tried to extend his passport at the Indonesian embassy in Beijing in 2006. He was described by the embassy as being an "environmental destroyer".
Allegations of court officials being bribed in his case have surfaced, although prosecutors have said they will appeal, while police have named Lis as a suspect in a linked money laundering case.
His lawyers have reportedly said they will present him to police -- who say they have issued an Interpol notice to recapture him -- if they promise not to jail him.
But in perhaps an ominous sign of the difficulties police may face, Indonesia's Attorney General Hendarman Supandji has dismissed efforts so far, saying: "This money laundering comes from which crime? This is not clear."
Derry Wanta, a member of the Indonesian Working Group on Forest Finance (IWGFF) -- an independent lobby group of researchers and activists -- conceded it would be difficult to get Lis back to court "but not impossible".
"It is written in the money laundering law that a suspect can be tried for money laundering independent from the prime crime," he told AFP, speaking after a meeting of the group over bringing Lis to justice on Thursday.
Indonesia's groundbreaking 2002 anti-money laundering law would be more effective in catching the illegal loggers than the conventional criminal code, said the IWGFF's Willem Pattinasarany.
"Most of their financial transactions use bank transfers. Unusual banking profiles can be easily traced -- ask (suspects) to prove that those suspicious transactions are not illegal," Pattinasarany said.
"If there are two crimes indicated to be related, one of them money laundering, we think it's best for the money laundering crime to be processed first" because it would be a simpler case, he said.
Still, police must carefully do their homework.
A recent case in Indonesia's timber-rich Papua province centred on a local police chief receiving large money transfers to his personal account; the officer was cleared, and an appeal dismissed, for administrative reasons.
Police said in May that they were becoming increasingly frustrated with the number of illegal loggers who were inexplicably being acquitted in Papua.
"There are many cases where police or prosecutors have not formed a tight case before going ahead to court. This had caused many cases to be dismissed for administrative reasons," Pattinasarany told AFP.
Sadino, a legal expert with the IWGFF, also urged police to be more careful in planning all their indictments, as sloppy work meant "usually, the man with the chainsaw in the forest gets the blame."
"Forestry crimes are specialty cases -- investigators should be coherent from when they start to collect evidence," Sadino said, adding that a single discrepancy can mean the whole case gets thrown out.
The Indonesian government had estimated illegal logging costs the country about four billion dollars and some 2.8 million hectares of forest cover per year over the past decade.
(JAKARTA) Indonesia may take at least seven years to halt illegal logging and deforestation in the world's third-largest tropical rainforests, according to the minister responsible for the trees.
Malam Sambat Kaban, minister of forestry, is seeking additional powers to catch and prosecute illegal loggers and may grant more rights to indigenous tribes.
The government also plans to prod companies to replant trees by enforcing the terms of existing plantations licences, he said.
'We are committed, we have a replanting programme and we are proposing a law,' Mr Kaban said in an interview here. 'We hope by 2014 the natural forest will not be disturbed.'
The seven-year target may be too slow for environmental groups and neighbouring countries Singapore and Malaysia, whose air has been made hazy by forest burn-offs in the South-east Asian archipelago.
Indonesia has granted logging rights over some 58 million hectares of rainforest, an area bigger than France, and is trying to preserve a similar-sized tract.
'I think the 2014 expectation is impossible,' said Rully Syumanda, a member of the Jakarta-based Indonesian Forum for Environment.
'Companies are not fulfilling their promises and there's corruption in the police and other authorities.' - Bloomberg
Follow the money trail in illegal logging crimes: Indonesian activists
Nabiha Shahab, Yahoo News 16 Nov 07
Indonesian activists are urging authorities here to hunt down illegal loggers using anti money-laundering laws, following the shock acquittal of a high-profile suspect who has gone on the run.
Indonesia's abysmal record on fighting illegal logging -- no timber baron has ever received a substantial jail term here -- is under the spotlight ahead of the nation hosting a global climate change conference in December.
Adelin Lis, the head of logging company Keang Nam Development, fled from custody earlier this month after a court in North Sumatra found he was not guilty of illegal logging charges due to a lack of evidence.
Lis' company was cleared of accusations that it illegally razed prime forest in lush North Sumatra province, where some of Indonesia's last remaining rainforest tracts provide refuge to elephants and endangered tigers.
The logger had originally been nabbed when he tried to extend his passport at the Indonesian embassy in Beijing in 2006. He was described by the embassy as being an "environmental destroyer".
Allegations of court officials being bribed in his case have surfaced, although prosecutors have said they will appeal, while police have named Lis as a suspect in a linked money laundering case.
His lawyers have reportedly said they will present him to police -- who say they have issued an Interpol notice to recapture him -- if they promise not to jail him.
But in perhaps an ominous sign of the difficulties police may face, Indonesia's Attorney General Hendarman Supandji has dismissed efforts so far, saying: "This money laundering comes from which crime? This is not clear."
Derry Wanta, a member of the Indonesian Working Group on Forest Finance (IWGFF) -- an independent lobby group of researchers and activists -- conceded it would be difficult to get Lis back to court "but not impossible".
"It is written in the money laundering law that a suspect can be tried for money laundering independent from the prime crime," he told AFP, speaking after a meeting of the group over bringing Lis to justice on Thursday.
Indonesia's groundbreaking 2002 anti-money laundering law would be more effective in catching the illegal loggers than the conventional criminal code, said the IWGFF's Willem Pattinasarany.
"Most of their financial transactions use bank transfers. Unusual banking profiles can be easily traced -- ask (suspects) to prove that those suspicious transactions are not illegal," Pattinasarany said.
"If there are two crimes indicated to be related, one of them money laundering, we think it's best for the money laundering crime to be processed first" because it would be a simpler case, he said.
Still, police must carefully do their homework.
A recent case in Indonesia's timber-rich Papua province centred on a local police chief receiving large money transfers to his personal account; the officer was cleared, and an appeal dismissed, for administrative reasons.
Police said in May that they were becoming increasingly frustrated with the number of illegal loggers who were inexplicably being acquitted in Papua.
"There are many cases where police or prosecutors have not formed a tight case before going ahead to court. This had caused many cases to be dismissed for administrative reasons," Pattinasarany told AFP.
Sadino, a legal expert with the IWGFF, also urged police to be more careful in planning all their indictments, as sloppy work meant "usually, the man with the chainsaw in the forest gets the blame."
"Forestry crimes are specialty cases -- investigators should be coherent from when they start to collect evidence," Sadino said, adding that a single discrepancy can mean the whole case gets thrown out.
The Indonesian government had estimated illegal logging costs the country about four billion dollars and some 2.8 million hectares of forest cover per year over the past decade.